Pamela J. Moss (Ed.) - Feminist Geography in Practice - Research and Methods-Blackwell (2002)

Feminist Geography in Practice
For the feminist geographers - students,

colleagues, and friends - whom /'ve worked
with and learned from over the years.
Feminist Geography
in Practice:
Research and Methods
Edited by Pamela Moss
li] BLACl<WELL
Publishers
The moral right of Pamela Moss to be identified as author of the editorial material
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First published 2002
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
List of Figures and Tables ix
Notes on Contributors X
1 Taking on, Thinking about, and Doing Feminist Research

in Geography 1
Pamela Moss
Part 1 Takl ng on Fem l n l st Research

Defining Feminism? 21
Feminist Pedagogy Working Group
Short 1 Being Feminist in Geography 25
Feminist Geography in the German-Speaking Academy:
History of a Movement
Elisabeth Baschlin
2 Making Space for Personal Journeys 31
Mary Gilmartin
3 Feminist Epistemology in Geography 43
Meghan Cope
4 The Difference Feminism Makes: Researching Unemployed
Women in an Australian Region 57
Louise C. ] ohnson
Study Material for Taking on Feminist Research 71
vi CONTE NTS
Part 11 T h i n k l ng about Fem l n l st Research

Delimiting Language ? 77
Short 2 Putting Feminist Geography into Practice 80

Gender, Place and Culture: Paradoxical Spaces ?
Liz Bondi
5 Paradoxical Space: Geography, Men, and Duppy Feminism 87

David Butz and Lawrence D. Berg
6 Toward a More Fully Reflexive Feminist Geography 103

Karen Falconer Al-Hindi and Hope Kawabata
7 People Like Us: Negotiating Sameness and Difference in

the Research Process 116
Gill Va/entine
Study Material for Thinking about Feminist Research 127

Part 1 1 1 Doing Fem i n i st Research

Decentering Authority ! 1 35
Short 3 Doing Geography as a Feminist 138

Reconsidering Success and Failure i n Feminist Research
Maureen G. Reed
8 Doing Feminist Fieldwork about Geography Fieldwork 146

Karen Nairn
9 Quantitative Methods and Feminist Geographic Research 1 60

Mei-Po Kwan
10 Borderlands and Feminist Ethnography 1 74

Joan Marshall
11 Negotiating Positionings: Exchanging Life Stories in

Research lnterviews 1 87
Deirdre McKay
12 Interviewing Elites: Cautionary Tales about Researching

Women Managers in Canada's Banking lndustry 200
Kim V. L. England
CONTE NTS vii
13 Studying Immigrants in Focus Groups 214

<:Jeraldine Pratt
Study Material for Doing Feminist Research 230

Feminist Pedagogy Working <:Jroup
14 Further Notes on Feminist Research :

Embodied Knowledge in Place 234
Isabel Dyck
References 245
Index 265
Acknowledgements
This project is the result of much effort by many people. 1 first want to thank
all the authors for being sensitive to the goals of the project while writing their
pieces and then taking my comments in the spirit in which they were given. 1
appreciate your patience and your writing skills! 1 enjoyed tremendously being
part of the Feminist Pedagogy Working Group. The vim and tenacity of all
these women provided me with endless hours of inspiration and learning. 1
thank them all individually for their work and effort - Amy Zidulka, Andrea
Lloyd, Denise Pritchard, Jenny Kerber, Kathleen Gabelmann, Cristal Scheer,
Erin Quigley, Joy Beauchamp, Kimberlee Chambers, Melissa Belfry, and
Tamara Koltermann-Hernandez.
Suggestions from anonymous reviewers at the proposal stage have enhanced
the quality of the project. Thank you for your insight and vision. Although 1
cannot name them, 1 also thank the feminists whom 1 asked to review material
for this book. Their labor permitted me to undertake a formal review process
for sorne of the authors' contributions. Blackwell has been wonderful through
out the whole process - from the proposal stage, through submission, to
publication. Sarah Falkus, Michelle O'Connell, Joanna Pyke, Katherine Warren
and Caroline Wilding have been particularly helpful! Thanks to Joan Sharpe
who provided editorial assistance in preparation of the manuscript.
Numerous colleagues have supported this project in intangible, indirect, and
unplanned ways: Margo Matwychuk, Margot Young, Martha McMahon,
Radhika Desai, David Butz, Janice Monk, J. P. Jones, Lawrence Berg, Robin
Roth, Shona Leybourne, Susan Ruddick, Sara McLafferty, Lynn Staeheli, Ellen
Hansen, Ruth Liepins, Katherine Teghtsoonian, Marie Campbell, Michael
Prince, Marge Reitsma-Street, and Anita Molzahn. 1 thank you ali. 1 also
acknowledge the Universities of Victoria and of Vienna from whom 1 received
support during the course of the project.
Finally, 1 thank Karl, Ann, Kath, Clarice, and Kathy for creating a respite
during undertaking this project. And 1 thank Karl for his enduring support of
me and all my endeavors.
Figures and Tables
F igures
4. 1 Profiles of unemployed women presenting to agencies in

Geelong, Australia, March 1 999 64-5
6.1 Models of feminist reflexivities 1 07
8.1 Fema le student's drawing of what she expects to do on a field

trip 1 55
Table
4. 1 Respondents in survey of unemployed women in Geelong,

Australia, April-July 1 999 66
Contributors
Elisabeth Baschlin has taught human geography ( u rban geography, plan

ning, and development) at the University of Berne, Switzerland, since 1 97 8 .
A s part of h e r research, s h e is interested in feminist geography, especially
European farm women and women in liberation movements. She is a
founder of the Working Circle for German-Speaking Feminists in Geog
raphy, was editor of the Geo-Rundbrief, and is also responsible for a small
NGO working with people from Western Sahara.
Lawrence D. Berg teaches feminist social and cultural geography at Okan

agan University College, Canada. He has published a number of articles on
gendered geographies.
Liz Bondi is professor of social geography at the University of Edinburgh,

UK, where she teaches on the geography program and on the gender studies
program. Her research interests include counseling and psychotherapy,
gender and urban change, and theorizations of identity, self, and subjectiv
ity. Her work draws strongly on debates in feminist theory.
David Butz is associate professor of geography at Brock University, Can

ada. His interests in social and cultural geography, geographies of everyday
resistance, community leve) social organization in northern Pakistan, and
transport labor in the Karakoram/Himalaya coalesce in a research project
which investigates how portering relations have significantly shaped trans
cultural interactions in the Karakoram region. He is also gathering courage
to write about "exodic" ( exodus-focused ) spatial identities as expressed in
reggae music and Rastafarianism.
Meghan Cope is an assistant professor of geography at the State University

of New York at Buffalo, USA, where she is engaged in research and
CONTRI B UTORS xi
teaching on urban problems; spatial perspectives on the social constructions

of gender, race, and class; geographies of social welfare, education, and
housing; and methodological issues in doing qualitative research.
Isabel Dyck is a social geographer in the School of Rehabilitation Sciences
and Faculty Associate, Women's Studies, at the University of British
Columbia, Canada. She teaches qualitative methodology, geographies of
disability, and feminist theories of the body. Her research interests include
women with chronic illness, and resettlement experiences of family, school,
and health care.
Kim V. L. England teaches feminist and urban geographies in the Depart
ment of Geography at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA. She is
also Adj unct Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto, Canada.
Her research interests revolve around feminist theories, women's paid
work, service sector employment, child care, and families.
Karen Falconer Al-Hindi teaches introductory women's studies and human
geography, as well as upper-level and graduare feminist geography, at the
University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA. Her research includes the history
and philosophy of geography, feminist research methods, urban planning,
and feminism, ethics, and geography.
Feminist Pedagogy Working Group in Victoria, BC, Canada: Kathleen
Gabelmann, Jenny Kerber, Andrea Lloyd, Pamela Moss, Denise Pritchard,
Amy Zidulka, Joy Beauchamp, Melissa Belfry, Kimberlee Chambers,
Tamara Koltermann-Hernandez, Erin Quigley, Cristal Scheer. We carne
together with a shared interest in feminist research in geography and a
desire to explore the relationship between theory and practice. Over the
course of nearly a year, we discussed our diverse experiences as feminists,
as students, and as researchers. We agreed to produce material that
supports feminist research pedagogy. Sharing an enth usiasm about working
through the challenges and possibilities of feminist research, we drew upon
both the contributors' and our own questions, dilemmas, and ideas about
how to take on, think about, and do feminist research in geography. In our
contribution, we provide a glimpse into our own process of working
through the material in the book. We hope that our work, while not
intended to be prescriptive, promotes discussion and enriches your learning.
Mary Gilmartin is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geography
at the University of Kentucky, USA. She is currently completing her
dissertation, a comparative study of education during political transition in
Northern Ireland and South Africa.
Louise C. Johnson is a feminist geographer currently Head of the art school
at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia . In this role she is j uggling
xii CONTR I B UTORS
management with research but also actively engaging with the "cultural
turn " in geography by studying urban festivals and cultural capital. In
addition she is researching women workers in the information technology
and service industries and on kitchens.
Hope Kawabata was a graduare student at the University of Nebraska at

Omaha, United States between 1 9 95 and 1 997. Her thesis was on ethnic
minority women in Omaha who worked from home by using telecommu
nication technologies. Her research focused on the relationship among
gender, race, ethnicity, and space in telecommuting. She would like to
convey to students reading this text that coming forth and writing about
her experiences while doing an MA has been worthwhile !
Mei-Po Kwan is an associate professor of geography at the Ohio State

University, USA. She is also a consulting editor of Geographical Analysis.
Her research interests include women's spatial mobility, information tech
nologies and women's everyday lives, and feminist methods.
Deirdre McKay is currently at the Australian National University as a

postdoctoral fellow. With research collaborators from the Philippine
Women Center, she is working on patterns of female migration and
transnational feminine subjectivities.
Joan Marshall teaches environmental studies at McGill University, Canada.

Her research interests focus on social and institutional change, especially in
relation to youth and women. Her experience with a long history of
community activism reflects a personal commitment that continues to pose
dilemmas in carrying out her research.
Pamela Moss teaches feminist methodologies in the Studies in Policy and

Practice Program at the University of Victoria, Canada. Her research
interests include body politics, feminist theory, autobiography, and
women's experiences of chronic illness. She is also a community activist
involved with creating innovative housing programs far women in crisis.
Karen Nairn is a research fellow at the Children's Issues Centre, University

of Otago, New Zealand. Drawing on her geography and high school
teaching background, Karen is researching the spatial and social dimensions
of young people's lives in schools and public spaces. Other research
interests include feminist theory, embodiment, geographic knowledges and
identities, and the politics of voice.
Geraldine Pratt is professor of geography at the University of British

Columbia, Canada. She is editor of Environment and Planning D: Society
and Space, ca-editor of the Dictionary of Human Geography, 4th edition,
and co-author of Gender, Work and Space. She works on gender, race and
CONTR I B UTORS xiii
la b or markets, and theater (and facus groups ! ) as methodology and politi cs.
Maureen G. Reed tries to understand policy processes associated with
en vironmental management. She was a professor at the University of Britis h
Columbia far almost ten years befare accepting a position at the University
of Saskatchewan in July 2000. Her research interests have taken her across
most of Canada, where she has explored the social character and political
responses of rural communities that are facing changes in the non-human
environment and in government policy agendas.
Gill Valentine is professor of geography at the University of Sheffield, UK,
where she teaches social geography, approaches to human geography and
qualitative methods. She is author of Social Geographies, Consuming
Geographies, and ca-editor of Children's Geographies, Cool Places and
Mapping Desire.
1
Taking on, Thinking about, and Doing
Feminist Research in Geography
Pamela Moss
What makes research in geography feminist? If you’re a feminist, do you

have to do feminist research? And, if you’re not a feminist, can you do
feminist research? What sorts of things do you need to know about in
order to do feminist research? How do you go about making a conventional
method feminist? Can the practice of geography research actually ever be
feminist?
I began thinking about this book with this seemingly endless list of
questions in mind, questions with definitive answers nowhere in sight.
Then, I wondered about wanting definitive answers. I thought what a treat
it would be to know when I had one and how suitably impressed I would
be when I saw one. Yet I’m content not to know. In fact, I revel in not
knowing – not knowing for sure. I’m comfortable asking questions about
research that have no “right” answers, to talk endlessly about how
feminism influences research in geography with whomever has similar
inclinations. I’ve been interested in feminist geography research for what
seems like ages now, as an undergraduate stealing glances of Antipode for
special projects, research papers, and for any chance I could get. I eventu-
ally figured out that the path to being an academic – studying, obtaining
degrees, and landing a tenure-track position at a university – seemed to be
a worthwhile path to follow so that I could continue being a feminist while
being employed. All these years later, after having undertaken various types
of feminist research projects in geography and teaching feminist methodol-
ogies in a number of contexts, I decided that I wanted to pull together a
collection of works that was organized around issues that I found useful in
undertaking feminist research in geography. For me, and I would anticipate
that for others this might also be the case, it makes sense to sort feminist
research into processes that we engage in when putting feminist geography
into practice: taking on, thinking about, and doing feminist research. And,
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2 PAMELA MOSS
to be sure, these processes only make sense in the context of the history of
methodological work within feminist geography.
Even though developing a feminist analysis was an issue early on in the
radical movement in geography, methodological concerns began appearing
in print only in the 1990s (see for example McDowell, 1992a, 1993a,
1993b; Canadian Geographer, 1993). It wasn’t that feminists in geography
weren’t interested in doing feminist research; rather, feminists weren’t
publishing their thoughts on feminist methodologies. It soon became
important however to refine feminist concepts in geography, including
those concepts associated with doing feminist research – method, method-
ology, and epistemology (Moss, 1993, pp. 48–9). These early methodolog-
ical works were heavily influenced by feminist work done in the early and
mid-1980s (see for example Moraga and Anzaldúa, 1981; Roberts, 1981;
Bowles and Klein, 1983; Harding, 1986, 1987a; Hartsock, 1984). In fact,
Sandra Harding’s (1987b, pp. 2–3) definitions of method as techniques
used in gathering evidence, methodology as a theory and analysis of how
research should proceed, and epistemology as a theory of knowledge, are
still powerful beginning points in understanding processes involved in
undertaking feminist research. As debates unfolded within and outside
geography throughout the 1980s and 1990s, feminists worked out more
sophisticated definitions, especially as they related to racialized and sexual-
ized relations within feminist scholarship (see for example Sedgwick, 1990;
Mohanty, 1991; Collins, 1998). The crux of these concepts remained the
same – method has to do with doing research, methodology had to do with
approaching research, and epistemology had to do with knowledge associ-
ated with doing and approaching research.
Attention to methodological issues in feminist geography coincided with
the increased publication of debates in collections of works focusing on a
specific aspect of feminist methodology in women’s studies, sociology, and
anthropology (see for example Personal Narratives Group, 1989; Nielson,
1990; Fonow and Cook, 1991; Gluck and Patai, 1991) and of more
generalized handbooks or “how-to” books (see for example Eichler, 1988;
Kirby and McKenna, 1989; Smith, 1990a, 1990b; Reinharz, 1992). In
geography, these feminist debates manifested in collections of journal
articles (see Canadian Geographer, 1993; Professional Geographer, 1994,
1995; Antipode, 1995), sections of books on feminist geography (see Jones,
Nast and Roberts, 1997a; WGSG, 1997; McDowell, 1999), and single
articles appearing in wide variety of feminist and non-feminist geography
journals (see for example Pratt, 1993, 2000; Katz, 1996; Moss and
Matwychuk, 1996, 2000; Domosh, 1997; Rose, 1997; Nairn, 1999).
This interest in methodology among feminist geographers was not only
a part of how feminism shapes feminist research in geography but also, as
Susan Hanson (1997, p. 122) points out, part of how geography shapes
{Page:2}
FEMINIST RESEARCH IN GEOGRAPHY 3
feminist approaches to research. Feminist geographers took up topics that

were specific to the discipline: spatializing the constitution of identities,
contextualizing meanings of places in relation to gender, and demonstrating
how gender as a social construction intersects with other socially con-
structed categories within particular spatialities, among many other topics.
Being able to work through these types of interests has had an impact on
the way feminists approach research within geography ranging from
approaching research as a feminist, through integrating spatial conceptual-
izations into a feminist research framework, to choosing feminist methods
for collecting and analyzing information. The maturity of the methodolog-
ical arguments developed by so many feminists within the past several years
makes feminist geography a rich field from which to draw out specific
research practices. Being a feminist matters when taking on research in
geography in that a feminist politics – whether it be based on pro-woman,
anti-oppression, or based on social justice – influences all aspects of the
research process. Thinking about feminist research tends to sharpen an
approach to a project in that understanding power and knowledge brings
into focus the varied contexts within which research takes place. Doing
feminist research means actually undertaking the task of collecting and
analyzing information while engaging a feminist politics. By including
pieces written by different feminists with different perspectives on research
and methods, I am able to offer a collage of ideas, thoughts, and arguments
about the practice of feminist geography. Instead of reiterating the argu-
ments about method, methodology, and epistemology by way of introduc-
ing these works, I turn the kaleidoscope just a bit and focus on sets of
issues that have arisen out of those discussions. As a way to make my way
through these issues, I first discuss taking on, thinking about, and doing
feminist research in turn and through the discussion offer a possible
framework for understanding specific practices in feminist research in
geography.
Taking on Feminist Research
Taking on feminist research entails close scrutiny and (re)politicization of

all aspects of the research process – from choosing a research topic to
selecting data collection methods, from setting a research question to
conceptualizing theoretical constructs, and from designing a research proj-
ect to presenting and circulating analyses. Working with the variegated
contours of the infusions, interfaces, and articulations of feminism and
research is a first step in taking on feminist research in geography. Placing
feminist work as well as placing yourself as a feminist researcher in the
context of research in geography and in feminism – contextualizing your
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4 PAMELA MOSS
work – makes it easier to see where you are coming from and where you
see your work going.
Though perhaps tiresome to both ask and answer, being able to figure
out why a piece of research is feminist continues to be important. Feminism
has often been differentiated by distinguishing waves of political
approaches to explaining and understanding women’s lives. “First wave”
feminism is associated with social reform, suffrage, and temperance move-
ments; “second wave” with equitable pay, sexual liberation, and conscious-
ness-raising; and “third wave” with difference, speaking from the margins,
and positioning self and other within multiple oppressions. And, now, as
we are moving through the new decade of the twenty-first century, femi-
nism is being reconstituted into feminisms, ones that go beyond gender as
the central construct in defining any feminism (see for example Hekman,
1999; Oakley, 2000), beyond power conceived dichotomously as either
something to hold or something to be used (see for example Collins, 1998;
Sandoval, 2000), and beyond body as the home and/or conduit of being
and experience (see for example Kruks, 2000). With the increase in various
influences affecting the constitution of feminisms, it becomes more and
more difficult to differentiate pieces of work that use feminist frameworks,
feminist theories, or feminist constructs to provide critical or radical
readings, research, and analyses and those that are indeed feminist. At the
risk of being essentialist, that is promoting the idea that there is a feminist
essence that exists in all feminist research, I think that it is useful to unravel
explicitly the ties that bind a piece of research in geography to a particular
feminist politics, a particular feminism. Refusing to accept that there is one
singular feminist politics does not preclude identifying straightforwardly
how an author of a research text is engaging feminism in the sense of not
only abstract concepts, but also concrete actions.
Being able to scrutinize more closely the ways in which we take on
feminisms in research may be a way to open up debate with non-feminists
as well as among feminists themselves. With non-feminists, debates could
take up the issue of what advantages do feminisms offer researchers that
non-feminist research can’t and, perhaps, vice versa. Unfortunately, what
happens in this type of debate is that the potential overlap of views that is
the basis for exchanging ideas is quite limited and therefore falls flat as
many feminist geographers no doubt have experienced in classrooms,
conferences, and colloquia. “Opening up debate” among feminists has its
own set of problems. In an academic milieu that is masculinist in its
practices, how can feminists wholly resist reproducing these practices and
remain feminists and academic researchers? Much feminist research in
geography is masculinist in its practice, not out of intention, but moreso
out of training for being an academic and for survival in the field.
Throughout the research project, feminists are continually holding in
{Page:4}
tension the immediacy of constructing authority through doing research,

writing about it, and teaching it and the notion that what they are doing
initially emerged as a contestation of an existing orthodoxy. Paradoxically,
even while negotiating this tension, within writings about feminist research
in geography there has arisen seemingly inevitably a feminist orthodoxy in
the English-speaking academy, one that tends to value qualitative research
and reflexivity as cornerstones of feminist research in geography. Paying
attention to the wide-ranging and perhaps roaming definitions of feminism
that infuse feminist research in geography and then engaging with those
ideas with feminists in discussion and in print could possibly release some
of the tension and facilitate a way through this dominance toward opening
up what it might mean to take on feminist research.
How this debate takes place and the form it inhabits is open. I think
that this book is one attempt at trying to rupture the closely knitted visions
of feminist methodologies in geography and to rumple the smooth progress
of developing decidedly feminist approaches to research in geography and
accentuate the highly contingent performance of feminisms in feminist
geographers’ works. If taking on feminism in doing research in geography
makes a difference, then learning about how feminists have come to a
feminism in their work is useful. The content of each piece has a particular
relationship with methodology, epistemology, and method. Elisabeth Bäs-
chlin provides a brief history of the forging of feminist geography in
German-speaking countries. Her tale plays out in four scenes with pioneer-
ing feminists weaving networks and eventually entering institutions so as
to shape more fully the future of taking on feminism in geographic research.
Mary Gilmartin reflects on her personal journey toward geography through
her readings of Toni Morrison. She comes to understand that she can
access experiences in ways that will assist in negotiating the tension
between knowing, learning, and doing. Meghan Cope lays out what types
of feminist claims about knowledge affect the undertaking of research. She
unravels just one type of bind that marks a piece of research as feminist.
Louise Johnson draws on her own experience with a research project with
women looking for employment. She recounts how feminism makes a
difference in research activities including securing funding, hiring research
assistants, and analyzing data. Bearing in mind the contingent ways femi-
nisms articulate in specific research projects, trying to identify connections
among feminisms, geographies, and research while reading these contribu-
tions is but one entry point into understanding what taking on feminist
research involves.
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6 PAMELA MOSS
Thinking about Feminist Research
Issues arising when thinking about feminist research, though similar,

manifest differently than when taking on feminist research. The extent to
which feminisms influence research processes as well as the translation
of feminist politics into research are just as significant. Yet thinking about
feminist research also includes the articulation of specific theories with
a feminist methodological approach. For example, being able to interweave
thoughts about identity, subjectivity, and self requires thinking through
how to access salient information as a feminist as well as how to create a
feminist framework for understanding identity, subjectivity, and self.
Through this process, ambiguities, contradictions, and paradoxes emerge
alongside relative certainties, congruencies, and consistencies about both
the content and the process (methodology). These seemingly opposing
empirical findings permit researchers to continue pursuing ideas, thoughts,
and notions about the topic and how to do research. Not all geographers
undertaking feminist research focus on identity, subjectivity, and self as
research topics; however, these topics have been important in understand-
ing the relationships researchers have with themselves, research partici-
pants, research topics and thus have come to play a large part in
understanding feminist methodology (see for example McDowell, 1993b,
1997b; Nast, 1994). The particularities of methodological discussion
regarding topics, themes, and the manner of engagement are specific to the
feminists thinking about research. Within feminist geography, researchers
have tended to think about power, knowledge, and contexts together with
sorting out the practicalities of doing research.
Power is a central construct in discussions of how to approach feminist
research and differences in conceptualizations of power produce different
types of feminist approaches to research. Feminist methodological discus-
sions rarely revolve around competing conceptualizations of power that
would be useful for feminist research; rather, discussions of power usually
promote one particular conceptualization. For example, Gillian Rose
(1997) argues that feminists who discuss “distributions of power” invoke
a structuralist account of power that is not particularly useful for feminists.
She claims that using the notion of uneven landscapes of power refuses to
acknowledge that people variously located in complex webs of power
participate in their own constitution. As a result of invoking such a
transparent notion of power, feminist geographers only end up creating a
transparent reflexivity – something that is impossible to achieve because no
one can know themselves thoroughly and exhaustively. In contrast, Linda
McDowell (1997b), dealing with the same sets of issues – destabilization of
the category woman, what makes research feminist, and gender – comes to
{Page:6}
a different conclusion. Even with the shift in focus on how gender is

constituted through power, she remains focused on transformative under-
standings of women’s conditions of everyday life. She makes the point that
holding onto notions of power that conceive social relations as flexible but
not too flexible permits complex abstractions to explain more adequately
complexities in everyday life. What is interesting about these two method-
ological discussions is that they both focus on identity and difference – of
the researcher and of the research participant. These same interests repro-
duce feminist research in geography differently in different contexts (for
example see Peace and Longhurst, 1997, for the Aotearoa/New Zealand
case; Bäschlin and Meier, 1995, for feminist geography in the German-
speaking academy). In disciplines other than geography, feminist research-
ers discuss approaches to research and power outside identity and
difference. For example, in North American sociology, struggling to justify
qualitative methods in light of quantitative dominance shapes feminist
discussions of methodology (for example see Devault, 1999; Resources for
Feminist Research/Documentation sur la recherche féministe 2000) whereas
in North American psychology, unsettling links among masculine power
and subjectivity fashions discussion (see for example Swann, 1997; Ussher,
1997).
Feminists undertaking research in geography think about multiple
aspects of knowledge through an array of relevant concerns. Geography as
a discipline has privileged a masculine subject position and reproduced
binaries such as male/female, culture/nature, and object/subject where more
value has been placed on the first part of the dichotomy. Feminists in
geography have followed the lead of several feminist philosophers in
examining the underlying assumptions of who are knowers, what can be
known, and what is valued as knowable (see for example Hawkesworth,
1990; Harding, 1991; Haraway, 1991; Tuana, 1993). Understanding how
masculinity permeates the discipline has opened up ways of thinking about
knowledge such that a feminist subject positioning can develop within
geography as well as that the same, masculine-weighted binaries are not
continually being reproduced. In coming to terms with these sorts of
assumptions, feminists also distinguish processes that construct or consti-
tute knowledge – processes that are primarily discursive such as reiterating
masculine words (for example, mankind), concepts (for example, objectiv-
ity), and notions (for example, exploring, conquering, and subduing the
exotic as integral to the practice of geography) and processes that are
primarily material such as mentoring students, training researchers, and
teaching students (for examples of these types of arguments see Berg and
Kearns, 1996; Blunt and Rose, 1994; Desbiens, 1999; Moss et al., 1999;
Hanson, 2000). Because these processes are saturated with power even
within feminism, a politics surrounding the construction of knowledge
{Page:7}
8 PAMELA MOSS
endures beyond the overt actions involving written or spoken words. More
subtle activities, such as the choice of authors in a reading list for a senior
undergraduate class, of a book to be reviewed in a journal, or of a cited
work as an exemplar of a point a scholar wants to make continue
(re)creating an authoritative knowledge that may or may not challenge the
dominant orthodoxy in feminism. Being able to read works critically under
the conditions within which one learns implies untangling the processes
constructing that specific contribution as a piece of knowledge as well as
part the process of creating knowledge that would include that specific
contribution.
In addition to issues involving power and knowledge, thinking about
feminist research entails thinking about the context within which research
takes place. Because power is intimately tied up with the construction,
constitution, and production of knowledge through research, the context
within which research can take place also needs close inspection. Take, for
instance, funding and time, two of the most limiting and enabling aspects
of research. Ample time and money creates an environment where research
can actually take place. Yet having both does not necessarily entail an
unproblematic research process. Questions immediately arise as to whether
to accept money from, for example, a corporate entity, a philanthropic
foundation, or the state or to hire research assistants to increase research
time for the project. The latter of course further begs the question, what
sorts of employment relationships are part of feminist research? Designing
research projects sensitive to notions of power and knowledge takes a
considerable amount of planning. Issues for thought range from, for
example, “appropriate” attire to seat location while conducting interviews;
from etiquette for contacting potential research participants to remunera-
tion of actual participants; and from facilitating relationships among
research team members and participants to enabling a supportive environ-
ment for training research associates in the field. Dilemmas inevitably
emerge even with careful, thoughtful, and thorough planning and not all
quandaries can be resolved – immediately or in the long term. The context
of research also includes understanding issues beyond the immediacy of
undertaking a feminist research project. For example, in order to secure
funding, researchers need to figure out what types of research agendas are
being advanced by particular funding agencies so that applications for
funding are directed to appropriate institutions. Also, recognizing conven-
tional practices of the academy in specific places is important so that an
aspiring feminist researcher knows whether to engage in local struggles
over justifying feminist research as “legitimate.” Thinking about research
in the context of feminist research then includes understanding the specific-
ity of the spatialities of both the research process and the milieu of feminist
research.
{Page:8}
The authors in this book have given thought to and written about
specific aspects of power, knowledge, and context, either explicitly or
implicitly. Liz Bondi explores a paradoxical space within feminism. She
relates her experiences with the journal Gender, Place and Culture as an
example of a feminist politics in an uncertain space as part of the context
within which feminist geography contributes to creating knowledge. David
Butz and Lawrence Berg present some of their thoughts on being male and
trying to do feminist research while working through notions of masculine
dominance in the politics of knowledge production. They offer an innova-
tive conceptualization, a duppy (which refers to a variety of sly and
malevolent ghosts) feminist, that may describe more sincerely the power
dimensions among men engaging feminism. Karen Falconer Al-Hindi and
Hope Kawabata use Hope’s research project as a backdrop against which
Karen argues that feminist researchers do have the potential to be more
fully self-reflexive in the pursuit of understanding power relations in the
context of interviews. Unlike some of the prevailing understandings of
reflexivity in feminist geography, Karen claims that an equitable power
relationship between researchers and research participants is possible. Gill
Valentine recalls some of the situations in her research projects that call
into question assumptions about sameness and difference. She argues that
her performance of her gender and sexuality is context-specific – varying
from project to project, interview to interview precisely because nego-
tiations and readings of both are momentary and specific. From these
contributions, it becomes more feasible to think that sorting through issues
of power, knowledge, and context may pave the way for actually doing
feminist research.
Doing Feminist Research
Issues surrounding doing feminist research in geography are in a sense an

amalgamation of matters arising when taking on and thinking about
feminist research. Paying close attention to how ideas about feminism,
power, knowledge, and context play out when undertaking the research
itself and engaging particular research methods are part and parcel to doing
feminist research. Without a continuation of thinking through these issues,
the work going into designing a feminist research project might be lost.
Three key concerns shaping the doing of feminist research in geography
are the scales of analysis and project, analytical issues emerging from
engaging in the research process, and the choice of data collection method.
The scale of analysis – the spatial focus of the inquiry – differs from the
scale of the project – the spatial extent of the research. Feminist research
can be undertaken on a variety of scales – for example, local, regional,
{Page:9}
10 PAMELA MOSS
national, and international – with a variety of scales of analysis – for

example, body, people, home, institution, city, or region. Although feminist
research often focuses on local, micro-scale studies, there is no intrinsic
connection between feminist research and scale. Drawing out the implica-
tions of a specific scale of analysis as well as the scale of the project for the
topic at hand is part of what research in geography is about (see the
organization of McDowell’s 1999 book).
What appear to be also significant in doing feminist research are the
analytical issues emerging from engaging in the research process itself.
Questions concerning the implementation of a feminist epistemology and
feminist methodology manifest during the undertaking of research and
emerge as problems or dilemmas. Sometimes analytical problems can
involve incongruent knowledge claims, as for example, arguing that the
experience of marginalized women is the (only) basis for political action
while using a structuralist framework that situates experience outside
accessible knowledge. Or, perhaps problems have to do with the incompat-
ibility of topic and theory, as for example, focusing on detailed social
practices of an institution and empowerment without accounting for the
notion of how power is deployed through social relations of power in
institutional settings. Both these types of problems cause difficulties in
providing an analysis that makes sense. Problems may also arise when the
methodological approach of a research project is at odds with the chosen
theoretical framework. For example, maintaining a complex conceptuali-
zation of power methodologically throughout data collection and analysis
(through a specific understanding of identity as fixed) while theoretically
challenging the same conceptualization of power in the explanation of the
phenomenon (identity as changing) can be difficult. Undesired slippage
between concepts is common and can usually be identified and dealt with
through discussions with colleagues, exchanges of works in progress, and
write ups of the research. Addressing these types of problems as they
emerge can strengthen the analysis of the topic of a research project as well
as refine the methodological approach.
With regard to the choice of method in feminist geography there doesn’t
seem to be a question as to whether feminists “should” be using qualitative
or quantitative approaches either for data collection or analysis (for an
extensive exchange of ideas see Professional Geographer, 1995). Rather,
the predominant view seems to be choosing a method appropriate to the
research question. Feminists have argued that the issues brought to the fore
during the challenge to quantitative methods, especially the exploitative
nature of the relationship between numbers and people, are moot in the
sense that qualitative methods can be just as exploitative (see for example
the argument in Stacey 1988). Calling for more sensitivity to the relation-
ship between the researcher and the research participant (often referred to
{Page:10}
as “the researched”) definitely heightened awareness about the actual

choice of method for data collection and analysis. Interviewing women, for
example, was not just about interviewing women (in contrast to Oakley’s
1980 argument), and the types of conclusions that one could draw when
basing the entire collection of information on the notion that women had
some connection to each other because they were women had to be
questioned. Where that woman was located vis-à-vis the multiplicity of
power relations mattered when it came to interacting and deploying power
within the research process. Interviewing elite women, for example, was
different, and perhaps could and should be approached differently than
interviewing women marginalized by the same economic processes that
made the first woman a member of an elite. These choices of method, too,
are inexorably shaped by the types of questions feminist researchers in
geography are interested in asking. Certain methods seem to be associated
with certain kinds of research – ethnography with cross-cultural research,
focus groups with minority groups being studied by majority groups, and
autobiography with marginalized women. But this is not always the case.
Ethnography can be used within one’s own culture; focus groups can be
used as a way of studying “us” instead of “them”; and autobiography
might be useful in addressing privilege.
The authors writing about doing feminist research discuss specific
research projects in terms of project design, choice of method, and dilem-
mas surfacing once the research has begun. They also address issues
concerning scales of analysis and projects, analytical issues emerging while
engaging in the research process, and choice of methods in their chapters.
Maureen Reed teases out fibers that hold in balance the “needs” of the
researcher and the “demands” of funding agencies. She uses examples from
several forestry research projects with different scales of analysis and shows
how this tension can be balanced. Karen Nairn pulls together some of her
thoughts about conducting multi-method research. She politicizes the
notion of “field trip” in the vein of politicizing “fieldwork” and ends up
exposing processes that construct geographic knowledge. Mei-Po Kwan
argues that understanding quantitative analysis is important for feminists
so that they can root out masculine bias. She works through specific
examples and pulls out the epistemological claims that make the research
either feminist or not. Joan Marshall presents some of her deliberations
over choices she has had to make while negotiating personal and pro-
fessional relationships with the people in the community where she is
undertaking her research. Because the community she is studying is so
small and replete with complex social relations, she must continually
scrutinize and assess her interpretations and presentations of information
from her research. Deirdre McKay seeks to problematize the personal
interaction between researchers and research participants: she is both
{Page:11}
12 PAMELA MOSS
enthusiastic and reluctant to disclose information about both herself and

the women she talked with. She suggests that resolution may come through
critical analysis of not just the topic, but the process of engagement. Kim
England presents detailed examples of her experiences of interviewing elite
women. She draws out the dissension between her expectations and the
actual happenings of the interview setting and provides useful tips on how
to adjust. Geraldine Pratt raises questions about the process of interpreting
material collected through focus groups. Through her critical reading of
printed transcripts, she encourages feminists to access the potential focus
groups have to offer in providing insight into topics such as power and
identity. Although these contributions are not exhaustive of the types of
feminist research geographers undertake – some obvious omissions are
institutional ethnography, survey research, and participatory action
research – they do represent the range of methods taken up by geographers
doing feminist research. These contributors demonstrate en masse that in
doing feminist research, taking on feminism as a methodological approach
to research matters and that the thinking about feminist research doesn’t
stop.
Feminist Methodologies in Geography
To reiterate, feminist methodology is about the approach to research,

including conventional aspects of research – the design, the data collection,
the analysis, and the circulation of information – and the lesser acknowl-
edged aspects of conventional research – relationships among people
involved in the research process, the actual conduct of the research, and
process through which the research comes to be undertaken and completed.
But it is not just adjustments in the definition of methodology that make a
methodology “feminist.” Making a methodology “feminist” implies politi-
cizing a methodology through feminism. As we already know, a feminist
politics has a wide range of possibilities. These possibilities are realized
through our own translations of a politics into practice (read praxis). Our
exchanges of information, experience, and knowledge through various
types of interactions – taking and teaching courses, attending and giving
workshops, giving and receiving advice, writing and reading papers – seek
to further refine existing arguments as well as open up new spaces for new,
innovative directions for future feminist research in geography. Whether it
be in formal lectures or informal conversations, critiques are ongoing and
are necessarily part of learning, understanding, and engaging feminist
research.
What may be helpful in figuring out how to approach, assess, or affirm
feminist approaches to research in geography is to contribute to discussions
{Page:12}
of how feminist methodologies play out in the politics of doing research in

and out of the classroom. I have found three discussion points, conceived
as tensions rather than polarities, useful in igniting dialogue.
Feminism as a politics is sometimes difficult to grasp for those not already
committed. The increased incidence of younger women refusing to claim to
be feminists might be directly related to the backlash against the public gains
feminists have made in the last quarter of the twentieth century and the
negative media images of individual feminists (see Faludi 1992 for a popular
take on this issue). Is the question really about whether or not you call
yourself feminist, or is it about taking up the politics associated with a
particular feminism? Or, can you call yourself a feminist without being
politically committed in your research or in your daily life? And, if you’re
not committed, are you being a dilettante, perhaps shopping for a politically
correct stance for future job opportunities, and is that a “bad” thing? Coming
to terms with this tension between political commitment and dilettantism is
embedded in our everyday existence and can be deeply troubling.
As can the tension between theory and praxis. Theory, as a combination
of both conceptualizations of phenomena and an explanation of how
phenomena work, exist, or articulate, and praxis, as a politically active
way to live in the world, are undeniably linked. Understanding one as
integrally wrapped up within the other creates an environment where there
cannot be any act that is not political. Understanding them as separate
entities permits neatly carved out niches among those interested in theoriz-
ing life (for example, academics) and dealing with social injustices (for
example, activists). Is either a solution? Many feminists hearken back to
Karl Marx’s words, and point out that the contribution of feminism is not
(only) to provide an understanding of the world, the point is (also) to
change it. Yet living daily life always being politically engaged is emotion-
ally painful and ethically debilitating. Are there guidelines to resolving such
a tension for feminists? For feminist researchers?
When disagreements emerge over things like the extent or intensity of
political commitment and the practice of theory, how, when, and in what
context do feminists express criticism? Being aware of the tension between
maintaining solidarity and engaging in critique is crucial in practicing a
feminist politics. What is difficult in negotiating this tension is to “know”
when to support other feminists, even though you disagree with them, and
when to speak out against feminist actions, even though you might support
the end result. In the context of feminist research in geography, this may
play out in a variety of ways. You might give support to feminists
presenting their work in departmental colloquiums even though you adhere
to an opposing theoretical framework whereas you might choose to publish
a critique of the same feminist’s work in a feminist journal, perhaps outside
the reach of the department’s immediate attention.
{Page:13}
14 PAMELA MOSS
The outcome of discussing these tensions in the context of taking on,

thinking about, and doing feminist research is uncertain. It may polarize
discussion between feminists and non-feminists. It may pull feminists apart
and set up a continuum of “pure” and “tainted” feminist politics. Or, it
may, as it has in my experience, evoke a set of ideas that establish a fresh,
context-specific framework for engaging methodological debates in feminist
geography. The process of setting up the framework through discussion
might set a collective, engaging tone for reading, discussing, and critiquing
the contributions in this textbook.
About the Book
I set the purpose of this book as threefold. First, I wanted to put together a
textbook with a wide variety of feminist perspectives on putting feminist
geography into practice, or how to approach research in geography as a
feminist and how to undertake feminist research in geography. Several
influences within feminism are represented in these chapters: environmen-
talism, Marxism, poststructuralism, postmodernism, and socialism. There
is also a noticeable difference between second and third wave feminisms as
well as between feminisms that deal primarily with discourses and those
that deal with materialities. What is profoundly attractive about all these
contributions is that they are all “feminist.” Although all may not echo
your particular feminism or feminist stance, my hope is that some of the
work at least resonates with your experience or piques your interest.
Second, I intended to capture a sample of leading feminist research from a
variety of feminist geographers. The contributors have various relationships
with the English-speaking academy with between three and over twenty
years of experience as feminist geographers – ranging from a complete
“outsider” to a well-ensconced “insider,” from undergraduate students to
full tenured professors, from the “margins” of Australia and New Zealand
in the English-speaking academy to the bi-nodal “center” of North America
and Britain. Locations of these contributors within the complexly spun
web of power relations and social divisions vary according to sex, age,
gender, class background, expressions of sexuality, race, ability, and ethnic-
ity. Access to such difference may or may not be easy for the reader unless
that difference is disclosed as part of the discussion about methodology.
Third, I aimed to create a collection that participated more fully in
demystifying the research process and making research accessible in various
ways. Rather than portraying research as something too important, too
complex, or too difficult for women and feminists to undertake (unfortu-
nately, a still too common belief!), I sought to unravel, in bits and pieces,
{Page:14}
the research process by inviting other feminists to write specifically about

one particular aspect that I thought might interest them. Breaking down
research into parts makes the tasks not only “do-able,” but also “identifia-
ble” – not in a search to simplify research, but rather to make each aspect
more comprehensible. By piecing together the text, I was able to highlight
what I thought important for discussion: rather than focusing on rigor,
validity, reliability, and bias (points upon which non-feminists attempt to
debunk feminist research), the book tends to focus on personal and political
struggles, rethinking research strategies, and embracing contradictions.
With such a tightly woven purpose, one could walk away with the
notion that this was the intent from the beginning. I’d rather not have that
happen. This book has its own history, one that is only partly located in
feminist methodologies in geography. Originally, I had planned a feminist
book on autobiography and many of the contributors had agreed to write
about their experiences of being a feminist geographer. At the book
proposal review process, however, the book transformed into a book on
feminist methodologies in geography. Yet even this process was subject to
revisions – initially the book was conceived as a text on approaching
gender and geography, but as the contributors created their pieces, it
became clear that this was a book on feminist geography and not gender
and geography. All the contributors remained committed to the project,
however, and the change in the final list of contributors reflects competing
commitments more than intellectual differences. Some contributions went
through a formal peer-review process at the submission stage, whereby I
was primarily the editor. I acted as both an editor and a reviewer for
almost all the contributions. Through the editing process, I strove to create
a tone that was personal, informal, erudite, and critical in hopes of
producing an accessible text for undergraduates and new graduate students.
Even though I saw myself as being picky beyond what I usually can muster
enough in courage to display, all authors eagerly took on this challenge,
and succeeded.
In organizing these contributions, it seemed to me that the themes of
“taking on,” “thinking about,” and “doing” feminist research in geography
encompassed what it was that I thought was needed in a textbook on
feminist methodologies in geography. Taking on feminism in research is a
political act. Yet being a feminist in geography is not necessarily difficult,
nor is it necessarily simple. Depending on the way feminist research in
geography is situated within the most immediate institutional environment
for geography (department, university, for example) and the way the
discipline is conceived, presented, or “taught,” the path for developing as a
feminist in geography or contributing to feminist geography will vary.
Although uneven in constancy, feminism still struggles for legitimacy within
geography and the academy. Thinking about feminist research is crucial to
{Page:15}
16 PAMELA MOSS
being both a feminist and a researcher. What feminists decide to discuss

about research stems directly from the meeting point of intellectual
moments, such as the focus on self, subjectivity, identity, and difference as
well as power and knowledge, and their values, ethics, and politics, such as
social justice, equity, anti-oppression, and experience. How to go about
achieving goals in feminist research is a tangible purpose for being a
feminist geographer. The goals, of course, are set through the arduous
process of self-reflection with collective voice and of finding a way through
theory and praxis. Doing feminist research covers the nitty-gritty of the
actual data collection and analysis. But even while doing the most mundane
task, one needs to think about the method, the analysis, and the use of
information or data; the audience, the participants, and members of the
research team; and about how feminism articulates with the chosen meth-
ods, form of presentation, and circulation of information or findings.
Another large part of the preparation of the book was the development
of the pedagogical material, located at the beginning and end of each
section. The Feminist Pedagogy Working Group, of which I was a member,
consisted primarily of women undergraduate and graduate students in
Victoria, British Columbia, who had some interest in feminism and geog-
raphy. At one point, the group tried to include undergraduates at different
universities through email connections, but this proved to be impractical.
Each working member had answered a public invitation to attend a meeting
about “putting together a textbook on feminist methodologies in geog-
raphy.” Not all members were feminist geographers, two were in English;
not all were students, two had already graduated and three finished their
studies during the project; and not all were the same age, the age span was
nearly 30 years. Each woman was interested in drawing on their experi-
ences, especially in the classroom, to develop material that would assist in
making research more accessible to students like themselves. We held
meetings where we discussed the content of each chapter in detail, possible
questions that would provoke engaged discussion, and potential exercises
that might enhance or challenge the point being made by the author(s).
Three matters shaping the interpretation of the material in the chapters
continually arose in the discussions – the definition of feminism, the use of
language, and the creation of authority. The Group decided to convey the
substance of these discussions as short essays that introduce each of the
three sections of the book. In “Defining Feminism?” group members point
to the variety of intellectual and experiential elements that have left
impressions on their and other people’s notions of what feminism is and
can be. In “Delimiting Language?” group members question to what extent
the use of jargon or precise language can be useful in the practice of
feminist research. In “Decentering Authority!” group members draw atten-
tion to underlying thoughts about the processes through which authors
{Page:16}
forge, reproduce, sustain, and decenter authority. Communicating the

nuanced meanings and the extensive array of discussion in written form
has been taxing, for not all points can be represented adequately, and
burdensome, in that choices have had to be made. The final form the
pedagogical material takes was the most effective way the Group could
express their engagement with the material. Members of the Group pored
over each word, each question, and each exercise as a group, individually,
and then as a group again. Group members offer each word, each question,
and each exercise as only one way to engage the material presented in the
chapters.
As with any writing project, especially textbooks, as the book took
form, lacunae began to appear – some foreseen, others unanticipated. I
knew that the contributors were all located in privileged and hegemonically
powerful positions as members associated (at least at some time) with a
university steeped in Western thought. I also knew that the topics addressed
by the authors did not explicitly address racialization processes within
feminist research, the problematization of the construction of ‘race’ and
‘race’ relations with feminist geography, or anti-racist strategies for effect-
ing social and political change. More diversity along the lines of including
feminist geographers from the South as well as topically would have only
strengthened the collection. What I had not anticipated was the lack of
variety in data collection methods and in analytical methods. Qualitative
data collection methods dominate these pages and qualitative and textual
analytical methods are by far the most popular types of analytical methods
included in the book. But this lack of variety should not be too surprising
given the propensity of feminist geographers in the English-speaking acad-
emy to reject quantitative methods as part of introducing feminism into
geography. These elisions and omissions notwithstanding, I think that this
book as a text will be an outstanding contribution to the practice of
feminist geography.
Read, engage, learn, enjoy.
{Page:17}
{Page:18}
Part 1
Taking on Feminist Research
Defining Feminism ?
Short 1 Being Feminist in Geography
Feminist Geography in the German-Speaking Academy: History of a
Movement
Elisabeth Baschlin
2 Making Space for Personal Journeys
Mary Gilmartin
3 Feminist Epistemology in Geography
Meghan Cope
4 The Difference Feminism Makes: Researching Unemployed Women in
an Australian Region
Louise C. Johnson
Study Material for Taking on Feminist Research
Defining Feminism?
Once "defined, " feminism immediately becomes like an " it," a "thing, "
something graspable, something tangible. Not a process, a manner of asking
questions, a way of looking at the world. Defining feminism is difficult
because it's not something I have to articulate day to day. Of course, the
question "How do you define feminism ?" has different meanings for different
women, different people. (A member of the Feminist Pedagogy Working
Group )
Historically, both practically and academically, feminism has been part of

a politics for women. Whether it be about control over reproductive rights,
the construction of knowledge, or the concrete manifestations of patriar
chal social relations, gender, defined as the social differences between males
and females, was the central construct around which feminists developed
theory and acted politically. During the last two decades of the twentieth
century, feminism underwent two dramatic shifts. First, feminist critiques
by women marginalized by feminist theory and within the women's move
ment shattered the category "woman, " revealing it to be monolithic, one
that was built on white, middle-class, Western women. Black women,
l esb ian women, disabled women, women from the South, and working
cl ass women in their writings and in their actions showed that feminism
was not for ali women, a premise upan which second wave feminism was
based; that type of feminism was only for an elite woman. Second, at the
sa me time, this emphasis on difference among women coincided with the
i nc re ased popularity of engaging with poststructural thought among femi
nis t ac ademics . An appealing aspect of poststructural thinking for feminists
Was the combination of destabilizing notions in the realms of knowledge
22 F E M I N I ST P E DA G O G Y WO R K I N G G RO U P
and truth claims: rather than being singular, fixed, exhaustible, and univer
sal, knowledge and truth claims were conceptualized as being multiplie,
fluid, incomplete, and contingent.
The resistance of many feminists to the "singular" - of woman, of politics,

of gender - is what has attracted me to feminism and feminist writings. 1
understand feminism in its broadest sense as praxis, a form of political
engagement aiming to analyse and to change inequitable and unj ust social
relations. It also is about exploring how to integrate personal feminisms in
wider contexts, so that feminism's questions and goals do not j ust reflect the
dominant interests of one 'kind' of woman. (A second member of the Feminist
Pedagogy Working Group)
The willingness of feminisms to respond to cnt1que and for feminists

themselves to be self-critical meaos that feminism, or more accurately
feminisms, has the potential to be an open and dynamic knowledge
community. Yet there still exists a tension between feminists claiming a
particular epistemological standpoint and claiming a legitimacy for multiple
truth claims. While both positions advocate contin ua! struggle against the
elision and erasure of differences among women, among people, each <loes
so in diverse ways.
To me, feminism means accepting the notion that feminism may mean
different things in different contexts. With my union, I'm always pointing out
that there are issues that need to be addressed far women, by women. I'm
the only one that knows anything about feminism ! But when I'm with sorne
of my feminist co-activists, I'm able to say something about marginalized
groups within the city without having to be defensive or explain what 1 mean .
And j ust because 1 say something about women in the street community,
there is not the assumption that 1 think that they're the only marginalized
group. Feminism plays out differently in each place, and I'm the one trying
to figure out what feminism means and then trying to act on what 1 think is
the best course of action. Still, feminism to me is about women somehow,
while at the same time being about dismantling the inj ustices that systemic
and personal abuse of power creates. (A third member of the Feminist
Pedagogy Working Group)
This tension between a feminism that has as its primary starting point
being a woman and one that relies on the destabilization of the category
" woman" has been a catalyst for thinking through feminist research .
Experiential knowledge is a cornerstone for second wave feminists,
especially in a collective voice, j ust as understanding self, identity, and
subjectivity is a cornerstone for third wave feminism. Drawing on women's
experiences as a particular standpoint is a powerful way to demonstrate
D E F I N I N G F E M I N I SM? 23
what it is about being a woman that is different than being a man: in

childbirth, childrearing, and reproductive capacity, labor in the workplace
and the home, and being in public and private spaces. Experience can also
provide insight into new spaces, through which other truth claims can be
made.
Much of my motivation for going back to grad school was to figure out
where 1 stood as a feminist. 1 had first come to feminism when, in my teens,
it had helped me name and think through sorne of my own personal
experiences. 1 figured, as many others <lid, that feminism was based on the
premise that ali women are linked through a common experience of oppres
sion. By the time 1 was in my early twenties, my interest in feminism had
waned, because as much as 1 could recognise societal inequalities 1 didn't
really experience oppression in my <lay to <lay life. 1 had no conceptual tools
to understand my privilege. Clearly, if 1 wanted to keep feminism in my life,
1 needed a more complex model and one that wasn't premised on me, or my
"I", as a centre. (A fourth member of the Feminist Pedagogy Working Group )
Just as feminist critiques from the margins and poststructural thought

has shown, women's experience, j ust like any other experience, is not
universal. In order to understand experience, feminists were indeed going
to have to look beyond oppressions based on dichotomous notions of
gender ( feminine/masculine ) toward a complexity that values difference
and diversity. Feminists have not given up the category of experience, but
they have turned toward trying to grasp how concepts related to experience
matter in doing feminist research . Thinking about research involves figuring
out ways the self can be known, how subjectivities emerge, and how
identities form. From these types of understandings, feminists have moved
toward identifying, and then learning from, specific subject positionings.
As the writers in this section tell us, taking on feminist research is fraught
with irreconcilable dilemmas, unanswered questions, and contradictory
practices. Because there is no "one" way or " right" way to think or distinct
path to take, a prescription for " good " feminist research <loes not exist.
But at the same time, there are issues that can be addressed that assist in
thi nking through what it means to take up feminism in research in
geography. Drawing on their own experiences in undertaking feminist
res earch projects the authors in this section disclose their feminist research
paths, full of decisions they made over the course of their engagements
wit h feminism. Mary Gilmartin tries to make sense of her j ourney through
liter ature and geography as a way to go beyond the limits of knowledge set
for her by geography's colonial past. Meghan Cope details a set of
im p lications arising out of research based on any one of severa) feminist
ep iste mologies. Louise Johnson, in her work with unemployed women ,
shows how feminism did make a difference a t various points throughout

her research project. Together the material in these chapters provides a
richly textured blend of a multiplicity of ways to take on feminism in
feminist geographic research.
Short 1 Being Feminist in Geograph y
Feminist Geograph y in the

German-Speaking Academy:
History of a Movement
Elisabeth Béischlin
Scene 1: Pioneeri ng Fem i n i sts
In the early seventies, feminist social critics within the women's movement
began questioning the prevailing images and roles of women within the
family and society as well as the types of research and the dominating
discourse in science - first in sociology, then in subjects like linguistics,
history, psychology, anthropology and political science. They were pion
eers, which means that they had to face solitary fighting, loneliness, and
isolation from other women and men (Wagner 1 9 8 5 , pp. 2 1 5-25 ) . Feminist
geography pioneers in the German-speaking academy were very much the
same.
It was only in 1 978, in Eva Buff's master's thesis about women's
migration out of mountain regions, that far the first time in German
speaking geography, women were treated as a social group separare from
men. But it was only in 1 9 82 that a geographical journal, Geographie
heute ( 1 9 8 2 ) , ( re )presented women as a distinct social group with special
activities and specific fields of action. Typical of the time, the tapie was not
about women or women's rights in Europe; rather, the focus was on
women in Africa, Asia and South America, situations seemingly far away
fro m Europe !
Even more groundbreaking, however, also in 1 9 82, a critica! article
appeared in a students' journal at the university of Zürich. Anne-Fran�oise
Gilbert and Mechtild Rossler ( 1 98 2 ) queried the absence of women in
geography. In arder to address this absence among a wider audience, the
two women organized a student workshop on feminist geography at the
official biennial national German conference, known as Deutscher Geogra
ph e n tag , or " German Geography Day, " in Münster, 1 9 8 3 . Also at the
co nfere nce, Monika Ostheider, assistant to a well-known professor,1 gave
26 E L I S A B E T H B AS C H L I N
a lecture entitled " Geographical Women Research - A New Theoretical

Issue? " ( see Ostheider, 1 9 84 ) . She clearly pointed out the " blindness " in
geographical thinking about women's roles in society as well as the lack of
women actually either doing geographical research or being the tapie of
research. Even though located " outside " the official geographical project,
women were finally becoming both research subjects and research objects.
After this conference, women students at severa! universities began engag
ing with feminist geography. And, after a short time, three feminist pioneer
students had submitted the first feminist master's theses - in Giessen,
Gottingen, and Zürich ( respectively Buschkühl, 1 9 84; Tekülve, 1 9 8 5 ; Gil
bert, 1 9 8 5 ) . Even though throughout the German-speaking academy -
Berlin, Freiburg, Hamburg, Giessen, Güttingen, Frankfurt, Zürich, Base!,
Bern, and Vienna - groups of students and individual women had become
active in their departments, there were no feminist geography presentations
at the national German conference in Berlin in 1 9 8 5 . Even though severa!
women knew about each other, contacts were still mostly fartuitous; there
was still no central organizing group. So, on German Geography Day in
München, 1 9 8 7, students from Frankfurt organized a second workshop on
feminist geography. By the end of the workshop, participants, far the first
time, made claim on an official "Working Circle on Feminist Geography. "
From 1 9 8 6 to 1 9 8 8 , a t the initiative o f a n active group o f women
students under the responsibility of the two professors, Elke Tharun and
Roswitha Hantschel, a series of lectures on feminist theories of science and
women's mobility were held in Frankfurt. Unfartunately, after 1 9 8 8 , due
to lack of funding, the lectures had to be given up. In 1 9 8 9, these lectures
were published by the students and became the first book about feminist
geography in the German language ( Bock et al., 1 9 8 9 ) !
Scene 2: Weaving a N etwork
In spring 198 8 , Verena Meier, an assistant to a professor in Base! at the

time, invited young women geographers that she knew were interested in
feminism in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to come to Les Emibois in
the Swiss Jura in arder to discuss the situation of women in geography. A
dozen women took up the invitation, mostly students, sorne ( the already
designated) pioneers. Sorne of these women had worked far sorne time on
tapies in women and geography, but most of them were quite alone and
isolated in their departments, missing out on opportunities far stimulating
discussions.
In Bern, too, a feminist student group had j ust been emerging. So, after
years of loneliness, 1 went to the meeting in the company of one of the
students . We had hoped to find experienced researchers on women and
B E I N G F E M I N I ST I N G E O G R A P H Y 27
science espousing a clear feminist research agenda. We had hoped that we

could profit from their great experience to build up feminist geography and
fe minist research in our own department. Oh, how we were disappointed!
We found that most of the other women at Les Emibois were seeking the
same things: taking great effort to collect information on a theoretical
ba ckground in feminist geography. We carne to realize that were still in the
midst of building a feminist geography. Yet, ali in ali, it was a good feeling
ro meet other women geographers working from similar perspectives. The
meeting gave us an opportunity to exchange stories and to discover how
sim ilar our situations actually were.
Most of those active at this time were geography students. None of them
had a secure position at a university, or even hopes of getting one. What
was happening was that ali the young feminist researchers left university at
the end of their studies, taking with them their knowledge and experiences,
without being able to pass them along to the next generation of students.
There was no continuity in research and the production of knowledge.
Each student had to start at the beginning; had to "invent the wheel " once
more. An impossible situation, but an example of the waste our society
makes with women's experiences and women's knowledge.
lt was clear that we could not continue like this . We needed women
geographers in good positions in universities, as lecturers and professors to
build up feminist geography and to assure at the mínimum at least sorne
continuity. However, this was beyond our power. Yet we had to do
something. So, we decided that we would weave a network to meet our
needs. First, we needed a place to announce national and international
conferences, publish reports about ongoing research, provide references to
literature, and connect women working in the same areas - simply to learn
from each other! So we decided to publish a newsletter, the Geo-Rundbrief
focusing solely on feminist geography. The first issue was published in July
1 98 8 , in Bern, because, as lecturer, 1 was the only one to have access to
sorne institutional support. 1 published the newsletter until March 2000. In
1 99 8 , the newsletter was launched on the internet (www.giub.unibe.ch/
femgeo ) and has subsequently replaced the paper publication.
Second, we needed sorne organization to co-ordinate our activities, a
group of sorne kind to bring us together as feminist geographers. On
German Geography Day in 1 9 8 9 in Saarbrücken, we held our first meeting
as the "Working Circle on Feminist Geography " with presentations from
students doing masters' work (Diplomarbeiten ) . After the conference, we
officially announced our existence at the meetings for the German Geo
graphical Association. We did not want our Working Circle to be a strongly
organized association; rather, we wanted a sort of " geographical women's
movement," held together by the newsletter and our communications. As
part of maintaining the network as a group, we considered important our
28 E L I SAB ETH BASC H L I N
presence a t every German Geography Day. Since 1 9 8 9 we have marked the

occasion with meetings of our "Working Circle " and, since 1 99 3 , with a
book display for information as well as a central meeting point. In this
way, we tried to establish feminist geography through our concerns about
women and our critiques of science and knowledge while, at the same time,
trying to serve as a group of contacts to young feminist geographers in
order to encourage them to continue their research even in their isolation.
Another important spoke in the feminist network, born at the same
time, is the " Student Female Geographers Meeting. " The idea for this
specific type of meeting arose at a national meeting of student associations
in 1 9 89, where there had been no chance to discuss women students'
issues. So women students decided to form their own informal, non
institutionalized meeting and met for the first time in June 1 98 9 , to discuss
their situation as women students in geography. They decided to hold
meetings every six months with varying topics about women including
feminist geography. Ali meetings are still being held without any institu
tional support. At each meeting participants simply decide among them
selves who is willing to organize the next one.
A network has indeed been realized. We succeeded in creating a forum
about feminist science, in spreading our presence into different geography
departments through our newsletter to make clear that feminist geography
<loes exist, and in giving support to students interested in feminist
geography.
Scene 3: E nteri ng l n stituti ons
As a small part of " entering" geography, lectures about feminist geography

have been held over the past ten years in severa! geography departments;
mostly in response to requests of students and assistants - Frankfurt,
Tübingen, Berlín, Vienna, Trier, Klagenfurt, Zürich, Base!. In 1 994, the
first Habilitation in geography with a feminist approach was presented in
Base! by Verena Meier. The list of geographical theses and dissertations in
feminist geography continues to grow.
We think it is important to bring a feminist approach into the insti
tutions if we want to change research in geography. For us, this means we
urgently need feminist geographers as professors. Actually, not only femi
nist geographers, but simply women geographers, who are also under
represented in universities. Universities in the German-speaking academy
continue to be an " ecosystem made by men, for men . " Ruth Bordlein's
( 1 994) work supports these observations. She found that most female
university teachers in German-speaking universities are over fifty-one years
old and single !
B E I N G F E M I N I ST I N G E O G R A P H Y 29
Nevertheless, we have begun to enter the institutions ! Since April 1 997,

D oris Wastl-Walter is Professor of Human Geography in Bern. And, in
F ebruary 1 99 8 Verena Meier became Professor of Regional Geography at
the Technical University of München . Both are declared feminists. And
this, in spite of ali the established professors in Germany who tell young
female geographers who wish to pursue positions in the academy simply
n ot to become feminists if they want to have any chance of getting a
professorship !
Scene 4: S hap i ng the Future
As professors, Doris and Verena now have real opportunities to promote

feminist geography. They include feminist critiques of scientific discourse
in their teaching and develop it in lectures and trainings. Gender research
programs can be presented in co-operation with professors from other
faculties, such as history and sociology, which gives feminist geography
more of a chance to be considered.
We want to work on a feminist reconstruction of geography ( Baschlin
and Meier, 1 99 5 ) . In general, our research subjects remain: topics on
spatial structures as the relation between access to space and social
power from which results dominance or exclusion of social groups
( Bühler et al., 1 993 ) ; questions about the definition of " labor, " production
and reproduction, and the gendered division of labor, as well as the
international one; and topics on social constructions of " nature " and
"culture . "
In summer 2000, the head of t h e University of Bern created an Interdis
ciplinary Center of Gender Studies . The chairwoman of the Center is Doris
Wastl-Walter. Great news !
So, feminist geography in German-speaking countries goes its way,
becoming more important in the academy.
N OT E
I n the German-speaking academy, i n addition t o a doctorare degree, each

scholar in a university must complete a Habilitation, a major independent
research undertaking, or what is loosely equivalent to a second doctoral degree
with tenure. In order to pursue an Habilitation, a new scholar must work with
an established professor, or an " assistant to a professor. " Once completed, the
Habilitation marks the formal entry and acceptance of a scholar into the
academy. Because professorships are limited in number, obtaining an Habilita
tion does not guarantee a professorship.
30 E L I SA B ET H B A S C H L I N
RESEARCH TIP
Data Sou rces
• Archives
• Case studies
• Census tracts
• Consumer artifacts
• Diaries and journals
• Documents from societies, institutions, organizations, and
associations
• Ethnographies
• Focus groups
• Folklore
• Genealogies
• Graffiti
• lcons
• lnterviews
• Landscapes (natural and built)
• Life experience
• Music
• Oral histories
• Photographs
• Place names
• Popular media
• Questionnaires
• Surveys
• Video
Last, but not least, be creative and innovative in the types of data you
use for your feminist analysis!
2
Making Space for Personal Journeys
Mary Gilmartin
I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critica! geography and use that map
to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure, and el ose
exploration as <lid the original charting of the New World - without che
mandate for conquest.
Morrison (1992, p. 3 )
These are the words o f writer Toni Morrison, and she uses them to open a
book of essays called Playing in the Dark . The essays are broadly concerned
with the themes of literature, race and national identity, and Morrison
shows the ways in which the language of literature is used to avoid or
evade the tapie of race in the American context. O nce 1 read this book
while an undergraduate in Ireland, it opened a new world for me. As a
young girl, 1 formed my vision of the United States from a strange mix of
The Waltons, John Steinbeck, and MTV. While 1 knew about slavery and
racism of the past, 1 had no sense of the ways in which racism had persisted
into the present. Morrison's prose and fiction writing showed me this
world. Her prose dealt with political issues as diverse as the absence of
black people from American history and the furore over Clarence Thomas'
appointment to the Supreme Court. Her novels dealt with issues that were
specific to black America, such as slavery, the Harlem Renaissance and
Civil Rights, but in a way that someone like me - a young white Irish
woman - could access and appreciate. Toni Morrison's work opened a
space for me to explore ali of these tapies, and showed me the different
w ays in which exploration can be used for the purposes of gaining
k no wledge without appropriation.
When 1 read this passage for the first time, 1 was an undergraduate
s tu dying Geography and English. In Geography, we took courses in a wide
ra nge of tapies: from geomorphology to urban geography; from cartogra-
32 MARY G I L M A RT I N
phy to the history o f the discipline. 1 loved the scope o f the subject, but 1
struggled to find links between it and English. The two subjects seemed to
operare in very different arenas, with little interaction. The literature that
farmed the core of my studies in English - novels, plays and poetry - was
discounted as "not quite geography" by many of my lecturers. Morrison's
words helped me navigate out of the confusion. We learn through explo
ration and discovery. We explore by bringing the unfamiliar and the
familiar together, in the hope that something exciting will result. And, even
though disciplines build barriers and claim territory as their own, we don't
have to accept these definitions . We are free to discover; though we often
need support as we set out on this journey.
This chapter is the story of making space far my personal journey
through geography. Along the way, 1 have received support as well as
discouragement from a wide range of people and places and ideas . 1 wanted
to write about sorne of these interactions and the ways in which they have
influenced my thinking about geography. These influences are not j ust
academic, they are also personal and política!. 1 write as a PhD student, so
this journey is far from over. So far, though, it's been both interesting and
confusing, and 1 would like to share that excitement and uncertainty with
you. Rather than start at the beginning, though, 1 want to begin in the
present, with the story of a research proj ect that has been running far the
last two years.
The Conquests of Geography
1 currently work as the research assistant on a project headed by Dr. Priya

Rangan of Monash University in Melbourne, and funded by the National
Science Foundation. The title of the proj ect is " Common Acces s Lands and
Sustainable Rural Development in South Africa, " and we study the econ
omy surrounding the collection and sale of medicinal plants in South
Africa . Medicinal plants are used far traditional medicine - the primary
source of health care far over 70 percent of black South Africans . Under
the system of apartheid, which operated in South Africa from 1 94 8 until
the first democratic elections in 1 994, people of different races were legally
separated from each other. Whites were by far the richest and most
powerful racial group, while blacks - the majority racial group - endured
poverty and were excluded from political power. White South Africans had
access to health care facilities that rivaled those of any wealthy developed
country, while black South Africans were provided with rudimentary health
care. Given this inequality, black South Africans had to rely on their own
resources far treating illness and disease, and they <lid so by using and
building on traditional knowledge about plants.
M A K I N G S PAC E F O R P E R S O N A L J O U R N E Y S 33
While traditional medicine is crucial t o the health o f the country, many

p eo ple disregard its importance and its efficacy. When we describe our
r es earch to people who do not trust traditional medicine, they are often
suspicious. They describe traditional medicine as backward, operating in
che realm of superstition without any scientific basis. They call traditional
doctors "witchdoctors," responsible far barbarie practices such as trade in
h u man body parts and witchburning. They ask, with raised eyebrows and
ill -disguised disbelief, "and <loes it work? " They expect us to answer " no, "
and to hear about charlatans and bogus medicines. When we tell them
rhat, in our experience, many traditional doctors and their treatments are
highly effective, they are surprised and by and large sceptical . They do not
want to believe that we have encountered practitioners who have studied
for years befare qualifying as doctors; who take a holistic approach to the
health of their patients; and who operate in conj unction with Western
medica! practitioners without needing to denigrate their approach. Instead,
they want to see traditional medicine as ill-faunded superstition, its prac
titioners as quacks, and its adherents as backward people who know no
better.
These reactions are surprisingly familiar to me. As an undergraduate, I
becarne interested in the history of geography. I spent many hours in the
library, leafing through dusty old copies of the Geographical ]ournal from
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I encountered detailed
accounts of travel, of " faraway " places, and of the people who inhabited
them. I imagined the effects of these accounts when they were delivered as
lectures, complete with illustrations - stories of primitive people with
backward ways of life, who inhabited exotic places full of riches they had
not yet learned to exploit. Geographical societies flourished in Europe in
this period, as people flocked to hear stories of unknown places. As I was
reading accounts of early explorers, I was also reading poetry and prose
that dealt with the issue of colonialism far my coursework in English. We
read Irish writers such as Yeats and O'Casey and Wilde; we read writers
from other colonies such as Fanon and Achebe; we read commentaries on
colonialism by writers from Swift to Said. I brought this infarmation to my
studies of geography, and as a result started to question not j ust the
practices of geography, but also its history. In particular, I looked again at
those early geographers and their active role in colonialism - a process that
l had come to view with considerable distaste.
As I explored, I realized that geography had been an academic too! of
e xploi tation . Brian Hudson argued, in 1 977, that the project of geography
a nd the project of imperialism were intricately connected, and that geog
ra phy had prospered because it was useful to the creation of empire. It
too k many years far Hudson's central thesis to gain widespread acceptance
wit hin the discipline of geography. Others noticed the link, though . Edward
34 M A RY G I L M A RT I N
Said, i n Orientalism, provided a broad-sweeping approach to this topic.

Drawing on literature and anthropology, history and politics, Said pointed
out j ust how useful geography was in the colonial endeavor. He quoted
Lord Curzon, later president of the Royal Geographical Society, who
argued in 1 9 1 2 that geography " is part of the equipment that is necessary
for a proper conception of citizenship . " Lord Curzon described geography
as a handmaid to other disciplines: young, eager, and willing to help in
order to prove its worth (in Said, 1 9 78, pp. 2 1 5 -1 6 ) . As David Livingstone
has shown, one of the ways in which geographers were useful was in telling
stories of foreign places. Many stories centered on the inhabitants of these
regions, who were portrayed as simple, underdeveloped, or deviant, and in
need of salvation. The process of exploration and subsequent colonization
was described in terms of a moral imperative to bring enlightenment and
truth to these people who otherwise were lost.
By making themselves useful, these early geographers sought to carve
out a place for geography within the university system. O ne such was
Halford Mackinder. Within and beyond geography, Mackinder was
important in a variety of ways. He worked tirelessly to have geography
recognized as a university discipline. His definition of geography as "the
science whose main function is to trace the interaction of man in society
and so much of his environment as varies locally " ( i n Livingstone, 1 992,
p. 1 90 ) is still the basis for many school and university courses in the
subj ect. And, as an early practitioner of what we now call geopolitics,
Mackinder advanced the Heartland theory. In this, Mackinder argued that
control of the Eurasian landmass was vital for world domination. It became
obvious to me, studying this theory during a time framed by the Gulf War,
that the Heartland theory was still highly influential both within geography
and in a broader context. Geography was being used to j ustify war, and I
was sure I didn't like this association.
The space of conquest for the discipline of geography was not confined
to its use as a too! of colonialism, or to its desire to become a legitimare
academic subject. The writing of geography was equally a struggle over
who could be a geographer, and in what way. As an undergraduate in
Dublin, studying Mackinder and other great men of geography, I was
struck by one particular fact. This has remained in my memory, despite the
disappearance of my hastily scrawled reference to its source. Mackinder
opposed women 's suffrage, on the grounds that women could not expect
to have the power of one sex, and the privileges of the other. While that
remark had a major impact on me, a young woman struggling to find a
place and a voice in academia, I have yet to see ir mentioned by historians
of geography or geopolitics.
Yi-Fu Tuan wrote in 1 976 that " geography provides useful knowledge "
(p. 275 ) . In the past, geography was useful to imperialism and colonialism,
M A K I N G S P A C E F O R P E R S O N A L J O U R N EY S 35
wh ether in the cartography o f the unknown or in showing the geopolitical

im portance of specific places. Geography continues to be useful today,
th rou gh technologies such as GPS ( Global Positioning System ) and GIS
( Geographical lnformation System ) . 1 was concerned with the uses to which
this knowledge was being put, and not j ust in the past. Through my studies
of literature, 1 saw the many ways in which words and language and
knowledge could be used to fight oppression . I wanted to imagine a
geography that was useful for those without power, and not j ust for those
who wished to j ustify war or find the right embassy to bomb or exclude
women from voting. I believed that geography could be used as a too! for
positive change, as a way of writing the world that didn't involve a
mandare for conquest.
Anti-colon ial Geograph ies
In my search to understand how geography could be used to resist

oppression and to creare alternative spaces of belonging, I carne across the
words of Stuart Hall, a writer of Caribbean descent. Hall wrote that " there
is no other history except to take the absences and the silences along with
what can be spoken" ( 1 99 1 , p. 4 8 ) . This passage was echoed by Toni
Morrison, who wrote in Playing in the Dark that " s ilence from and about
the subject was the order of the day. Sorne of the silences were broken, and
sorne were maintained by authors who lived with and within the policing
narrative. What 1 am interested in are the strategies for maintaining the
silence and the strategies for breaking it" ( 1 992, p. 51 ). Both Hall and
Morrison are writing about race, but their ideas are relevant for a wide
range of contexts. I used them to think about an alternative approach to
geography - an anti-colonial approach. If colonial geography is about
conquest, then anti-colonial geographies are concerned with exposing the
reactions to, and effects of conquest. Anti-colonial geographies are con
cerned with breaking, and writing, the silences of the present as well as the
past.
As an undergraduate, 1 found two different approaches to geography
helpful in looking for silences and absences. The first is humanistic geog
raphy, and the second, feminist geography. Humanistic geography, emerg
ing in opposition to the scientific imperative of quantitative geography, was
concerned with understanding and writing the geography of humans and
the humanness of geography. "There must be more to human geography,"
An ne Buttimer wrote, " than the danse macabre of materially-motivated
ro bots " ( 1 990, p. 5 ) . Instead, Buttimer posited that scholars could be
" catalysts for a more mutually respectful exchange among people" ( 1 99 3 ,
p. 220 ) . A n example o f one such exchange w a s a research proj ect that
36 M A R Y G I L M A RT I N
Buttimer was involved with i n Glasgow. There, i n the midst o f large-scale

housing reform, decisions about the mass movement of people to new
communities were being made at official and bureaucratic scales. Buttimer
and her colleagues talked to people affected about their experiences of
forced removal, thus personalizing the planning process and forcing a
recognition of the h uman impacts of planning decisions made by " outsid
ers. " 1 was lucky enough to have Anne Buttimer as a teacher, and to
witness the ways in which she made geography more inclusive and more
human, both in her research and in her approach to students. She showed
me how geography could be used to benefit those with less power, in a
way that involved dialogue rather than an imposition of ideas, by focusing
on people's lived experiences.
A focus on lived experiences has been fundamental to the work of many
feminist geographers . The concern of feminist geography was - initially, at
least - to make geography relevant for understanding the specific needs and
experiences of women. Monk and Hanson were early initiators in this
project ( 1 9 8 2 ) . They accused geography and geographers of gender-blind
ness. Geography, they argued, reinforced traditional gender roles, avoided
research themes that addressed women's experiences, and dismissed the
significance of women's activities. Because of the absence of women, both
as research subjects and as practitioners, human geography could not
legitimately claim to be about humans. lnstead, it was about men, though
deceptively couched in a language of inclusivity. Feminist geographers have
taken up the challenge of breaking silences. They focus on a wide range of
tapies: from epistemology to research methods; from politically informed
research to asserting a place for women within the discipline of geography.
In doing so, they have opened the way for a more catholic approach to
knowledge, one that is accepting of a wide variety of world-writing.
One area of interest for feminist geographers that 1 particularly enj oyed
was the renewed focus on travel writing. White women travel writers, from
Mary Kingsley to Eliza Fraser, were advocated as early geographers. 1 liked
this argument, because 1 liked the idea of travel writing as geography - it
challenged exclusive definitions of what was ( or, more regularly, was not)
geographic writing. In addition, 1 was impressed by these women's achieve
ments for they not only endured the discomfort of travel to distant places,
but also escaped the restrictions of women's assignation to private places.
This new focus on women's travel writing was significant because it
addressed a number of silences within geography. First, it insisted on a
place for women in the history of the discipline. Women travel writers
failed to achieve the same widespread acceptance as their male counter
parts, but this does not mean their achievements were any less significant.
These women were indeed early geographers, and we cannot understand
the story of geography without recognizing their protracted absence. The
M A K I N G S PAC E F O R P E R S O N A L J O U R N EY S 37
second silence relates to the types of knowledge that are often not con
sidered " geographic " enough . Women's travel accounts were rarely scien
tific, and often made no claims to objectivity. As geography struggled to
establish itself as a useful science, there was no place for these more
subjective accounts of travel by women. By bringing these stories to a
broader audience, feminist geographers have opened a space for other, less
m ainstream geographic voices.
When 1 wrote my undergraduate dissertation in geography, 1 was
ins pired by these examples. 1 wrote about the travel accounts of an
American woman, Asenath Nicholson, who visited Ireland in the 1 840s,
befare and during the Great Famine ( Gilmartin, 1 99 9 ) . 1 like her travel
books - they are vibrant and observant and still interesting - even though
many ( male) critics dismissed her as eccentric and consequently disregarded
her work. By focusing on Nicholson's neglected travel accounts, 1 felt 1 was
playing my part in writing an anti-colonial geography. There is, however,
an obvious contradiction in describing early women travel writers as anti
colonial, though 1 didn't realize it until much later. Many of these women
were, either directly or indirectly, part of the colonial proj ect. They could
travel in distant places because they were white and relatively wealthy. By
virtue of being white, they were associated with the colonizers who, in
turn, were among the powerful elite of the places they visited. Their relative
wealth gave them the freedom to move around, to hire transport and
servants, to eat well and to find accommodation. While their writings
certainly provided a different perspective to that of their male contemporar
ies, 1 increasingly became uncomfortable with thinking about their work as
anti-colonial. 1 recognize their importance in broadening our sense of
geographic writing, but 1 also see the limitations in relying on these
accounts as a challenge to broader inequalities.
lt is important for us to question the history of geography, and to ask
about the stories we have neglected or the perspectives we have ignored.
As 1 underwent this process, the work of h umanistic and feminist geogra
phers was vitally important to me. Humanistic geography stressed the
importance of people as thinking, feeling beings, rather than mere numbers
or statistics. Feminist geographers insisted on a place for women within the
history and practice of geography, and argued for a broader, more inclusive
approach to geographic knowledge. 1 saw both as forms of anti-colonial
geographies, because they made previously hidden people and ideas visible
again. Yet 1 also realized that challenges to the conquests of the practice of
geography were not sufficient. If we are to practice an anti-colonial
geography, we need to look both within and beyond the boundaries of the
discipline.
Mak l ng Place
In an essay by Irishwoman, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, I recognized a different

form of anti-colonial geography. Ní Dhomhnaill is a poet who writes
primarily in the Irish language, and then translates her work into English .
" Dinnsheanchas " ( 1 99 6 ) is her account of the ways in which Irish people,
primarily rural Irish, named and " owned " their surroundings in spite of
colonial control. For Ní Dhomhnaill, this happened through dinnshean
chas: an intimate knowledge of place. The child of Irish migrants, Ní
Dhomhnaill was born in Lancashire but sent, at the age of five, to live with
her aunt and uncle in the Kerry Gaeltacht in arder that she would be fluent
in Irish. Her uncle, Thomas Murphy, fostered her fascination with din
nsheanchas. Thomas told Nuala about their family history: where they had
lived, when they had moved, what they had worked ar - stories that
stretched back for seven generations. The crux of Ní Dhomhnaill's argu
ment in this essay is that, through the centuries, dinnsheanchas has been a
way of knowing the land " emotionally and imaginatively without any
particular sense of, or actual need for, titular ownership" ( 1 996, p. 43 1 ) .
When Ní Dhomhnaill writes of knowing without possessing, she poses
an interesting and difficult challenge. Knowledge is territorial. We are
encouraged to participare in its struggle for space: to define our areas, our
disciplines, our place in the academy. We put up defences. We erect
barriers. We fight over what is or is not acceptable as " geography, " a barde
that is ostensibly about academic rigor, but is ultimately about identity and
territory. Clarence Glacken recognized the difficulties with this definitional
obsession. In Traces on the Rhodian Shore, his account of nature and
culture in early Western thought, Clarence Glacken wrote that: "A his
torian of geographic ideas . . . who stays within the limits of his discipline
sips a thin gruel because these ideas almost invariably are derived from
broader inquiries . . . . Of necessity they are spread widely over many areas
of thought" (in Livingstone, 1 992 : p. vi ) .
Glacken certainly achieved this feat. His text i s broad-ranging, learned,
and inspiring, and takes us on a journey from Aristotle to Malthus and
Count Buffon. Through this account, ir becomes apparent that Glacken
realized the search for knowledge and understanding should not be
restricted by the boundaries of the academy. We can learn much about
writing the world from those who are tangentially ( if indeed ar ali) related
to the academic project of geography. World-writing, though certainly
central to geography, is not nor should not be considered the exclusive
rights of that discipline.
Feminist geography opened a space for other voices in geography, so
that we need not be restricted to a limited way of understanding and
M A K I N G S PA C E F O R P E R S O N A L J O U R N EY S 39
re p resenting knowledge. One range of voices is represented by literature.

My interest in literature is not motivated by the need to assert j ust how
" geographical " a particular piece of writing is. Rather, 1 am interested in
Jite rature that is open and broad-ranging, and concerned with the intersec
tion between the places we inhabit and the identities we assume. In my
conceptual framework, geography is as much about the novels of Toni
Morrison, and the film scripts of Roddy Doyle, as it is about superimposing
rhe concentric zone model over land-use maps of Dublin. These writers
created, for me, a sense of curiosity about the apparently familiar, a sense
of excitement about the unfamiliar. They encouraged me to explore and, in
doing so, enhanced my understanding of different places and contexts and
re lationships.
Written literature certainly adds another, deeper dimension to our
understanding of people and places. To rely on written accounts, however,
means that we often miss out on the stories and experiences of people who
do not express themselves in written form. In academia, we are trained to
value the written word over the spoken word, and to validate our research
with published references. As a result, we learn to either ignore or discount
oral accounts. But for our research in South Africa, much of the detail and
richness has come in the form of stories from people who work as plant
collectors and traders on a day-to-day basis. We spent time collecting
plants with a woman in Eastern Cape who, in a grassland area much
smaller than a football pitch, identified over thirty different medicinal
plants. We passed hours in the plant markets in Durban, watching and
learning about the hundreds of different products that are sold and their
myriad of uses. We interviewed plant collectors, plant sellers, herbalists
and traditional doctors in five different provinces. These people span a
wide spectrum: from urban to rural; from poor to extremely wealthy; from
highly educated to having little formal schooling. What they do have in
common, however, is a detailed knowledge of their trade. Yet when Priya
first suggested a research project that focused on the medicinal plant
economy, many people told her she was wasting her time. " lt's trivial,"
they said. "Don't waste your time studying that topic. " She persisted,
convinced that it was important - for a number of reasons - to understand
how this economy works. Her conviction has turned out to be correct.
Traditional medicine is extremely important, not j u st as a source of health
care, but also as a source of income for the many people who make a living
from this trade. But much of this knowledge is not documented. lnstead, it
is oral, passed from generation to generation, and through practica! experi
ence and learn ing. And often, this knowledge is discounted: marked as
i nfe rior in the same way that women's stories were treated in the past, or
i ust as " natives " were dismissed by colonizers.
This research has taught me the importance of broader inquiries. We
have drawn from many different disciplines and from many different people
in our quest to understand the economy of traditional medicine in South
Africa. Our research is not without problems. We work through transla
tors, so the words of the people we speak to are filtered through others.
We are both based at Western universities, which puts us in a privileged
position in terms of resources . At times, that privilege can create difficulties,
particularly in relation to intellectual property. And we work within a
context that is shaped by apartheid, which in turn shapes the ways in
which people respond to us and to our research. Despite these problems,
however, we have been governed by a curiosity about our research topic,
and a willingness to engage with any ideas or people that might help us
better understand the topic. By being open to new insights, our understand
ing has been enriched considerably, and we in turn have been able to
contribute ideas and information to the people who have helped us. By
being appreciative of dinnsheanchas in the South African context, we have
made a space for discovery that takes place through the stories of others.
A Personal J o u rney, Cont l n ued
Twenty, thirty years from now, he thought, ali sorts of people will claim
pivota!, controlling, defining positions in the rights movement. A few would
be j ustified. Most would be frauds . . . [What would remain invisible] were
the ordinary folk . . . Yes, twenty, thirty years from now, those peo ple will
be dead or forgotten, although they were the ones who formed the spine on
which the televised ones stood. (Morrison 1997, 212 )
This passage comes from Toni Morrison's latest novel, Paradise. It is a

commentary on the Civil Rights Movement, and on the ways in which the
history of this or any movement gets rewritten to favor the few at the
expense of the many. This process is obvious within the disciplining of
geography. The writings of women travellers in the nineteenth century get
discounted in favor of the accounts of their male counterparts. Women are
written out of " human" geography. The voices of ordinary people are
discounted, as the writing of geography takes on a scientific and objective
and exclusive tone. Yet, in opposition to these exclusions, other geogra
phers have consistently fought to highlight those who have been ignored in
the past.
In my personal journey through geography, 1 have drawn on these
reactions to silences and absences. My engagement with the literature of
colonialism and postcolonialism gave me the tools 1 needed to start
questioning geography's imperial past. Literature - both fiction and prose
- got me interested in issues of race and identity. The power of writers such
M A K I N G S PAC E F O R P E R S O N A L J O U R N E Y S 41
a s Toni Morrison a n d Stuart Hall gave m e the courage t o address these

ro pics in my research, despite being told that it wasn't " geographical "
en ough .
Feminist geography in particular created space for me, both personally
an d professionally. Through feminist approaches, 1 was able to legitimate
my interest in literature and race, as well as in the everyday. 1 realized that
geography could just as equally be anti-colonial as colonial; that it could
use the language of liberation instead of being bound by the language of
discipline and control. These possibilities converged when 1 worked in
South Africa, through my participation in a broad-ranging research project
chat was more concerned with conversation and collaboration than with
conquest and control.
1 have drawn on many of these interests and concerns in deciding on
my own research topic. My PhD is a comparative study of the role of
education systems in the crafting of new national identities in Northern
Ireland and South Africa . My interest in the concept of national identity
stems from studying colonialism and postcolonialism, as well as from an
interest in how different groups - blacks in the US, for example - have
been excluded from the process of defining a national identity. Education
plays a very important role in this process, but often this role is unques
tioned. This is particularly true in divided societies such as South Africa
and Northern Ireland, where education is seen as one of the tools for
positive change. I'm interested in looking at the conflicts that arise over
change, especially for groups who feel threatened. In order to understand
che conflicts, 1 speak to people at ali levels in the education system, and
from very different social groupings. My geography training is useful for
this proj ect, but so too is my interest in literature and the everyday and
the stories of women and countless other topics that provide different
perspectives on this question.
We work within traditions of knowledge, and draw inspiration from
what has been done in the past in the name of geography. This past gives
us strength and legitimacy. Yet as Claudio Magris writes, " every identity is
also a horror, because it owes its existence to tracing a border and rebuffing
whatever is on the other side " ( 1 990, p. 3 8 ) . If we remain within the limits
of our discipline, we lose the tools that we need to challenge its horrors
and uncover its silences. lt is through engagement with other thinkers and
wr iters and critics that we learn to look at what we had previously taken
fo r granted from a different perspective. By writing beyond limits, we learn.
ACKNOWLE D G E M E NTS
Thanks to Vincent D e l Casino, Carole Gallaher, John Paul Jones, Dervila Layden,
Pamela Moss, Nancy O'Donnell, and Priya Rangan for their comments on earlier
drafts of this chapter.
RESEARCH TI P
Mai ntai n i ng a J ou rnal
• Note your ideas as they evolve and your thoughts on different

aspects of the research tapie .
• Record " ah-has, " " oh, yeas, " and " of courses " as they come to
you .
• Develop a system that works conveniently and thoroughly for your
research purposes.
• Organize your journal, e . g . use color coding, index tabs, recipe
cards, or different binders to organize your material .
• Su bdivide your journal into categories, such as research q uestion,
theory, methodology, data collection, analysis.
• Keep more than one journal, e . g . one for methodology, one for
theory, one for details.
• Make notes on links among data, theory, and method.
• Enrich your journal by drawings, figures, or clippings. Don 't restrict
yourself to written text !
• Maintain a reference library (bibliographic software can be useful) .
• Keep a detailed record of names, numbers, and addresses.
• Make a note of the commitments you've made to your participants
and to the project .
• Date every entry.
3
Feminist Epistemology in Geograph y
Meghan Cope
What Is an " Ep l stemology " ?
Sorne type of epistemology underlies every research project, yet it is not

always (or even often) made clear by the authors of scholarly work. An
epistemology is a theory of knowledge with specific reference to the limits
and validity of knowledge. More simply put, an epistemology helps us
answer the question " How do 1 know what is true?" ( McDowell and
Sharp, 1 999, p. 75 ) . For example, if we decide only to validare knowledge
based on direct observation, we have identified an epistemology: we can
say "we know X is true because we can observe it. " This particular
epistemology (called empiricism ) is fairly simple, yet already we run into
problems in many areas of research . For instance, it may be difficult to
observe phenomena such as racism, the global economy, or democracy, yet
we know they exist because of their effects on society, economics, and
poli tics.
In order to understand what epistemology is and how it influences
research, we first need to recognize that knowledge is humanly constructed
or " produced. " That is, knowledge is not j ust " out there" waiting to be
revealed to us; rather, we are active participants in producing what counts
as knowledge. Once we understand this point, we can move to recognizing
that if knowledge is indeed produced by human actors, there must be
multiple and even contradictory perspectives, interpretations, and uses of
k nowledge. Knowledge is not something that we can passively or actively
acquire because we are always involved in its production and interpreta
tio n. Similarly, knowledge production is never a " value-free" or unbiased
pr oces s.
A third point arising out of the two premises above is that there are
many epistemologies possible in the research process. Researchers' individ-
44 MEGHAN COPE
u a l perspectives will inevitably influence their privileging of different types

of knowledge ( for example, a researcher will value sorne sources, forms, or
kinds of data more than others ) . Privileging certain types of knowledge
shapes the researcher's understanding of the results and in turn influences
the way that others will understand the published interpretations of results.
There are many levels at which we can identify ways that the underlying
epistemology biases and shapes research processes and results. Researchers
make decisions about how to form their research questions, how to collect
data, how to analyse data, and how to communicate results to a wider
audience. At every point in this process, the beliefs and interests of the
researcher matter to the outcome. In the past few decades there has been a
push to revea! and make explicit the underlying epistemologies of ali areas
of research because of the growing recognition that ali research is rife with
biases that researchers bring with them to the research process: culture,
race, gender, class, and other forms of difference. While we recognize that
there is no such thing as bias-free research, there is a growing commitment
to minimize harmful biases of omission or discrimination (e.g. ignoring the
influences of race or gender on disease statistics ) and to freely acknowledge
other biases ( e.g. coming from a middle-class background in a study on
poor families ) .
So What is a Fem i n ist E p i stemology?
If we understand an epistemology to be a theory of knowledge that is

particularly concerned with how knowledge is produced and its inherent
biases, we can identify epistemologies coming from various perspectives
such as an anti-racist epistemology, a Marxist epistemology, or - as is
explored here - a feminist epistemology. There are two aspects to a feminist
epistemology according to Elizabeth Anderson ( 1 99 5 ) . The first involves
how the consideration of gender influences what "counts " as knowledge,
how knowledge is legitimized, and how knowledge is reproduced and
represented to others. For example, the recent push in feminist scholarship
to " listen to women's voices " challenges the ways that previous researchers
discounted women's words as qualifying as " knowledge . " To take this
notion a step further, a feminist epistemology involves not only hearing
" women's voices" but also thinking about how gender as a set of social
relations affects both men's and women 's responses in the research frame
work, how the genders of interviewers and respondents might affect the
data, and how research results are circulated to academic audiences and
the public.
The second aspect of feminist epistemology requires thinking about how
socially constructed gender roles, norms, and relations influence the pro-
F E M I N I S T E P I S T E M O L O G Y I N G E O G RA P H Y 45
d uction of knowledge. What d o w e as a society consider t o b e legitimare

knowledge? And what role <loes gender play in the production of knowl
edge? How is our understanding of knowledge production influenced if we
st art thinking of multiple genders along a spectrum rather than as a binary
of women/men? If the production of knowledge is an active process
in volving differently situated human actors, we would expect that people's
various experiences, identities, and social locations will influence what they
count as knowledge and how they participare in its production and
le gitimization.
Gender influences the ways that people experience the world, interact
with others, and what opportunities or privileges are open or closed to
them. One of the most important elements of gender relations is the way
that they solidify hierarchies and relationships of power in a society,
through various means of, on one hand, oppression ( violence, discrimina
tion, marginalization ) and, on the other, privilege (preferences, favors,
power over others ) . Therefore, in the processes of producing knowledge,
we would expect those who are oppressed to have different roles in
constructing and legitimating knowledge than those who are privileged and
in power. Most likely, the views and thoughts of the former group will be
subsumed under those of the latter group. This is an example of considering
how gender relations influence the production of knowledge: women's
active participation in what "counts " as knowledge has historically been
seen as less significant than men's through the mechanisms of power-based
gender relations. That is not to say that women are less active in or capa ble
of producing knowledge; rather their roles in this process have been
unrecognized or discounted due to the exaltation of men's roles.
A gendered analysis of knowledge production is more complicated than
merely looking at the roles of men and the roles of women in making
knowledge. Gender affects societies deeply and in multiple ways that are
not always easily identified, separated, or categorized. Gender as a set of
relationships influences the production of knowledge through many
avenues: media, the socialization of children, religious and cultural values,
and political and economic processes. Part of the task of understanding the
influence of gender on the production of knowledge is to try to identify
and tease apart these many influences while remaining conscious of the
ways that these are constantly changing and affecting each other. Further,
by opening our inquiries to include multiple genders and not j ust those of
women and men, we introduce another leve! of complexity to a critica!
appr oach to the ways that gender relations influence the production of
k nowledge. Overall, a feminist epistemology takes gender as central to
u n der standing the production of knowledge and thus influences the nature
of rese arch performed and interpreted from this perspective.
46 MEG HAN COPE
Challengi ng Mascu l i n ist Science
The first task of understanding and adopting a feminist epistemology is to

revea! the masculinist underpinnings of science, particularly the ways that
claims to " value-free " or " neutral " science actually mask gender signifi
cance. Gillian Rose ( 1 993, p. 4) identifies masculinist work as that which
claims " to be exhaustive and it therefare thinks that no one else can add to
its knowledge . "
Consider a labor market analysis that looks carefully a t a l i the obvious
variables of where different j obs are located, what the qualifications of
people holding those jobs are, journey-to-work times, and the increase or
decrease of job availability over severa! years. This analysis may be
thorough in sorne people's eyes, but a feminist researcher would immedi
ately want to know how gender affects the workings of the job market,
asking such questions as: Are women concentrated in certain jobs and
excluded from others? Do women and men earn the same amount far
comparable work? Do women's greater household responsibilities affect
their labor market participation? Are women's journeys to work shorter or
longer than men's? Is there a gender division of labor? And, more broadly,
how do gender relations saturate the practices of the labor market in
countless subtle ways, ideologically, culturally, and politically? By ignoring
these questions (and others, such as what effects race and racism have on
the labor market), the initial study seems inherently incomplete and flawed
because it was based on the assumptions that not only do individual
women and men behave the same way in labor markets, but also broad
gendered social relations have no impact on employment. This is an
example of the limited vision of mascu linist science. Although the research
ers undoubtedly felt they were being " neutral, " objective, and thorough in
their research, their failure to consider a wide range of questions and issues
relating to gender renders their analysis partial and narrow. A feminist
critique of this research challenges its epistemology as masculinist because
by failing to examine differences between men and women and the impact
of gender relations on work and labor markets, the authors assumed that
ali practica! and ideological impacts on labor markets had been fully
accounted far in the analysis.
Another aspect of masculinist science is an assumption that men com
prise the norm far humanity. The pharmaceutical trials of aspirin in the US
demonstrate this point clearly. Pharmaceutical trials far new drugs and old
drugs far new use are considered to be sorne of the most rigorous and
" bias free " in ali of science. The US Food and Drug Administration is very
careful about allowing drug companies to make claims about the effective
ness of their products based on their own research. However, in the case of
F E M I N I ST E P I S T E M O L O G Y I N G E O G RA P H Y 47
rh e use of aspirin for preventing subsequent heart attacks ( the results were
widely circulated via television and magazine advertisements ) , the initial
study was done entirely on men. The researchers failed to consider the
application of this treatment for women and yet the results were published
as if they applied equally to everyone.
So what do we mean by " science" here? Science is perceived as system
atic , unbiased, neutral, rigorous, and ultimately, the best way to get to the
truth. Yet from the examples above, we know that these perceptions of
scie nce are open to question . Many of the roots of modern Western science
lie in the European Renaissance era when philosophers and researchers
attempted to use empiricism ( direct observation ) to throw off the veil of
mysticism prevalent prior to the Renaissance. The notion of truth devel
oped such that it was assumed to be pre-existing ( out there for us to
discover) if only we could gather enough evidence and measure phenomena
using enough variables. However, feminists and postmodern scholars have
critiqued the empiricist approach of " science," claiming it produces merely
one of many competing "truths. " The very term " science " has had a long
history of masculinism because it has represented a powerful force in
society that has consistently ignored or actively suppressed diverse forms of
knowledge production, the importance of gender and other sets of relation
ships on constructing multiple truths, and, finally, " science " has carried
with it the assumption that its complete and exhaustive authority over
knowledge cannot be challenged.
The Sclence Q uestlon
Sandra Harding ( 1 99 1 ) developed three critiques of masculinist science. In

one sense, there is the matter of simply doing " bad science " by creating
and maintaining highly discriminatory hierarchies within science disciplines
that prevent women (and other people who are perceived as " unscientific " )
from reaching the upper echelons of performing research. Second, Harding
considers " standpoint theory" in which there is an understanding that
multiple perspectives are valid in as much as they are genuinely held by
people coming from different " standpoints. " From this perspective, " sci
ence " can be critiqued on the basis of the limitations of male researchers'
understandings due to their positions and experiences of power and privi
lege. That is, male researchers cannot possibly understand multiple views
of a problem because the world is at their feet and there is no need to step
clown from a pedestal of power (or so the theory goes ) . In a third critique
of masc ulinist science, Harding reviews the contributions of feminist post
mo der nists who challenge the very premises of science as merely
e xp re ssions of power and oppression . That is, the whole project of science
48 MEGHAN COPE
is j ust a mechanism t o keep large numbers of people under the thumb of a

few elites. Of course, these three critiques are overlapping rather than
mutually exclusive - standpoint theorists may well agree that science is a
mechanism of the elite, for example. The important point is that the
concept of science is challenged on the basis of its masculinism through
many different routes, both practica! and ideological.
But where do we go from here? Is science salvageable in any form? Or
must we ali j ust wallow in a sea of subjectivity and relativism with no
universal truths upheld by the public? Harding and others argue that the
key to saving science is to recognize that objectivity cannot be increased by
sorne pretended " value neutrality. " Rather, we need wide and rigorous
inclusion of multiple perspectives, including those of the oppressed and
marginalized. She and others have advocated a " strong objectivity " that
maintains the goals of rigorous scientific inquiry but requires a wider array
of questions, interpretations, different perspectives, and inclusion of
researchers and subjects from marginalized groups to strengthen the claims
of " truth . "
A s another response i n challenge t o claims o f value neutrality, Donna
Haraway uses the concept of " situated knowledges" ( 1 9 8 8 ) . By this,
Haraway means that we must reject the all-encompassing " truth " notion
in favor of context-specific and situation-sensitive knowledges. For
instance, rather than searching for universal statements that apply every
where to everyone (and therefore really apply nowhere and to no one ) , it
would be better for us to acknowledge the biases, perspectives, and
contextual factors such as political systems and cultural values inherent in
the research proj ect and move forward from that point. Harding, Haraway,
and others are attempting to demonstrate that the cloak of " neutrality" in
science is actually hiding the true complexities of research in our real world
of messy and complicated phenomena and masking the perpetually and
necessarily partial views that we as researchers hold.
Fem i n i st E p i stemo logy In Practice
How <loes a feminist epistemology make a difference in a research project?

First, we need to acknowledge that there are many possible feminist
epistemologies; that is, there is no one right way to do feminist research .
Just as there are multiple forms of feminism, there are multiple feminist
epistemologies that may, even in a given project, complement, contradict,
or build on each other. In a general sense, any research project involves
forming research questions, collecting data, choosing methods, analysis and
interpretation of data, and representing the results - in each of these stages
a feminist epistemology matters.
Forming research questions
B efare a feminist researcher can even go about collecting data, she or he

m ust formulate the research question ( s ) that guide the project. For example,
a general interest in how people use and experience a public park would
de pend on various factors including the ages, race, class, gender, sexuality,
a bi lity, etc. of the users, and on the purpose of being in the park ( to play,
to sleep, to meet people, as a short-cut to work , to buy drugs ) . These issues
m ay then spur the feminist researcher to recognize that relations of power,
such as gender, make a difference in how/when the park is used. Following
this, the researcher may consider the broader question of how construction
of gender norms, expectations, and relations influence perceptions of public
space. This is how epistemology helps shape a research question - by
raising issues of the significance of gender right from the start.
Co/lecting data
Gathering data for a research proj ect involves many steps as well, which,
again, are influenced by epistemology. First, the feminist researcher needs
to consider what kind of data would be appropriate to connect to her/his
theoretical framework. For example, someone doing a study of housing
issues for Hmong refugees in California would need to consider people's
own preferences, forms of discrimination in the housing market, loan
availability, job locations, transportation, cost of housing, citizenship
issues, language barriers, etc. The researcher would then need to determine
exactly how to measure or create indicators for each of these categories
and figure out where the data would come from - the census, a mail survey,
in-person interviews, participant observation, bank data, and so on. Epis
temological questions in data gathering come through the consideration of
what "counts " as data. In feminist research, data issues are influenced by
an explicit emphasis on legitimizing women's knowledge, exploring gender
as a set of power relations, valuing gender as a central variable in
quantitative studies, and considering ways in which social constructions of
gen der influence the production of knowledge (Professional Geographer,
1 99 4 ) . Indeed, in many ways feminist scholars have pushed the boundaries
of wh at "counts " as data, using diverse sources such as diaries, letters,
photographs, songs, and artwork to broaden our understanding of
women's lives and gender relations, particularly when few other sources
ar e av ailable for capturing their voices. For example, these have been
es p ecially helpful in historical work because women's history is less often
r ec or ded, and rarely in their own words because masculinist history/
MEG HAN COPE
geography h a s been privileged in the production of knowledge, in part by

privileging certain data sources over others ( see Norwood and Monk,
1 9 8 7; Katz and Monk, 1 993; Domosh, 1 996; Cope, 1 99 8 ) .
The actual acts o f collecting data are also implicated i n the epistemolog
ical basis of feminist research. Far example, who is interviewed, what
questions are asked and how they are phrased, the gender of the interviewer
vis-a-vis the gender of the respondent, the nature of the interview ( formal
list of questions versus an open-ended conversation ) , and even where the
interview takes place (a formal office, a coffee shop, a public space, a
privare home ) are important elements to the construction of the research
project. These issues ali have implications far epistemology because, again,
choices about performing research in certain ways and not others indicare
what we consider to be the limits and validity of knowledge. These factors
are also important to acknowledge in the representation of results because
they have a great <leal of influence on the findings. Far instance, Moss
( 1 995b) showed that her gender facilitated research with the house cleaners
she interviewed and observed ( though her class status complicated it
somewhat ) , while England ( see chapter 12, this volume ) found that her
gender hindered her interviews with male banking CEOs in a highly
patriarchal setting.
In terms of data, the feminist imperative to challenge " masculinist
science" requires entertaining a wide array of explanations far one's
hypothesis or theory, and then thinking about how the data collection
strategies reflect that commitment to feminist inquiry. Attention must be
paid to ali stages of data "mining, " collection, and validation.
Choosing methods
A feminist epistemology <loes not require the use of speáfic methods, but it
<loes require critica! reflection on the use of ali methods of analysis and
interpretation . The combination of a set of methods with a particular
epistemology is commonly referred to as the " methodology " of a project.
As with any research, the methods should be appropriate far the data and
far the research questions. Interviews and personal logs may be more
appropriate far learning about women 's experiences of gender discrimina
tion in employment while large-scale data bases and statistical analyses are
more suitable far demonstrating the broad effects of labor market biases
( Lawson, 1 995 ) . However, both qualitative and quantitative methods can
be imbued with a feminist epistemology that shapes the research questions,
sees gender as an important set of relations that has deep repercussions on
the lives of both men and women, and considers the ways that gender
influences the production of knowledge.
Similarly, the methods used for data analysis should b e appropriate for
th e purposes of the research. If the purpose of the research is to understand
th e social and economic implications of women as subsistence farmers then
ce rtain methods may be more appropriate than others - for example if
"official " data sources show very few women engaging in farming but
ca sual observation suggests that the practice is in fact very common, then
dependence on large, government information and statistical methods
would not be adequate. And this data mismatch might suggest a good
place to start a research project !
Analysís and ínterpretatíon
Analysis refers to more than merely the methods used to analyse the data,
whether statistical regression or qualitative text analysis. There is also a
component of interpretation, reflection, and re-evaluation that involves
thinking about the meanings and implications of the data rather than
merely the results. First, a feminist analysis is sensitive to gender differences
in social, political, and economic relations for both women and men. For
example, a feminist epistemology requires that we acknowledge that men
and women navigate labor markets, transir systems, health care, farming
practices, and cultural traditions differently and leads us to seek to under
stand the root of these differences and their impacts on daily life and
beyond.
Second, feminist researchers are sensitive to using gender as a " problem
a tic " ; that is, seeing gender as the central h inge of the research on which
everything else pivots. This leve! of analysis involves considering differences
as part of a larger system of gender relations that are deeply embedded in
social, cultural, political, and economic processes and maintained through
everyday practices, beliefs, and expectations, as well as structural forces
such as laws and institutions.
Finally, analysis in feminist research is sensitive to how a gender
perspective influences the production of knowledge. Here, analysis becomes
a highly reflective process in which a researcher acknowledges her or his
own gendered perspective and how that shapes the interpretation of results.
This is akin to Haraway's concept of a "situated knowledge " where the
c on text of the researcher, the subj ects, and the place ( both social and
p hy sic al) are taken into account in the analysis to understand how gender
i nfluences the production of knowledge: who produces " legitimare " knowl
edge, how it is produced, whether and how that production is contested,
a n d in what broader context knowledge is created and re-created.
52 MEG HAN COPE
Representation of results
The communication of the results of data gathering, methods, and analysis

to a broader audience is not a simple task free of biases. Whether it is in a
written paper, an oral presentation, or through sorne other form of media
( film, website, policy report, etc. ) , the representation of results is complex
and epistemologically significant. Feminists ha ve long challenged the notion
of " experts " who spread "the truth " in ali realms of science; such experts
are critiqued as validating only sorne forms of knowledge, masking or
ignoring their biases, and using the power of their positions to avoid
opposition in the construction of their truths. In response, feminist
researchers have developed various strategies that have been used to disrupt
the traditional power dynamic between researcher and subjects, such as
sharing and confirming the results of analysis with the respondents and
even co-authorship of the final presentation. These strategies are not free
from problems either, but they are worth considering for certain types of
research . A key point is that the representation of results should be
approached with as much care and self-critique as any other step in the
research project. Feminist epistemologies make a difference to the represen
tation stage; in effect, the representation of research is producing knowl
edge and is therefore highly influenced by the underlying epistemological
concerns of the author ( s ) .
However, even here w e need t o disrupt o u r tidy notions o f what
constitutes " representing results. " Feminist researchers ha ve been on the
forefront of exploring alternative research strategies, which influence ali
stages of the research process including representation of results. For
example, co-authoring with subjects, participatory action research, and
other forms of collaboration destabilize the traditional model of researcher
researched and create openings for new forms of communicating findings.
Finally, the media through which the data are shared and the audience
to whom they are targeted are important considerations. While much of
academic research is published solely in disciplinary j ournals (often for the
benefit only of the researcher who gets a degree or a promotion based on
publications ! ) or presented at academic meetings, there are other forums
through which research results can be effectively spread - and perhaps
make a greater difference in people's lives - such as press releases to
newspapers, television news spots highlighting special events, reports to
political decision-makers, and internet sites. The process of communicating
research findings is always politically and epistemologically complicated.
As Pamela Moss has written, "we [as researchers] must be able to come to
terms with differences in the way power is constituted . . . between the
researcher and the 'researched' . . . . Difference embodies oppressive and
exploitative relations a n d t h e experiences o f t h e processes o f marginaliza

tion" ( 1 995b, p. 8 3 ; emphasis in original ) . That is, j ust because feminist
researchers try to be inclusive in the writing or production process and try
ro engage at a political leve! with empowering their " subjects " <loes not
mean that power and oppression are eliminated. While various researchers
a pproach this problem differently, common strategies include maintaining
a self-critical reflexivity ( questioning one's own actions and motivations in
the research ) and using existing privileges of the researcher as ways to
foster change (e.g. using the " a uthority " of a university setting to call
attention to oppression, abuses, and exploitation ) . The work of a critica!
geographer is never done !
Feminist epistemologies in geography
Feminist geographers have, in the past twenty years, dealt with ali of the
issues discussed above both by actually doing research and writing about
it, and by reflecting on the research process and writing about that. In
terms of actually doing geography from the position of a feminist episte
mology, 1 would like to provide two examples by reviewing two quite
different proj ects that use gender as a central problematic.
The first is Susan Hanson and Geraldine Pratt's multi-year proj ect
designed to examine the connections between work and home for women
and men in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the late 1 9 80s and early 1 990s
( Hanson and Pratt, 1 99 5 ) . In this project, gender is seen as a central
dynamic through which the social and the spatial are mutually constructed.
They argue that the gendered practices of the household division of labor
and the labor market's occupational segmentation are inherently dependent
o n each other - women's socially constructed duties in the home serve to
put both spatial and time limits on their job-search activities, and, simul
taneously, cultural gender expectations mean that employers are more
likely to hire women for particular jobs and under particular conditions
(e.g. clerical work at part-time for low pay and no benefits ) . In this case, a
fe minist epistemology made a difference to the research in so many
interlocking ways that it is nearly impossible to conceptualize what their
study would have been without it. Certainly we would not have such an
elegant exploration of the deeply embedded nature of gender in labor
markets, nor such a thorough demonstration that the links between home
and work are extremely important for constructing both women's and
men's lives. From the first moment of conceptualizing a research question
( " How are gender differences constructed spatially? " ) to the final writing
( " O ur argument is that social and economic geographies are the media
through which the segregation of large numbers of women into poorly paid
54 MEGHAN COPE
j obs is produced a n d reproduced" ( Hanson a n d Pratt, 1 995, p. 1 ) ) , the

authors highlighted women's and men's different experiences, used gender
as a central set of relations and constructions, and considered the ways that
gender matters for the production of knowledge.
The second project involves a grassroots political organization, the
Kensington Welfare Rights Union ( KWRU ) , that is concerned with econ
omic human rights violations, particularly their impacts on poor women
and their families in the Kensington area of Philadelphia. This project is
currently being conducted by Melissa Gilbert and Michele Masucci at
Temple University ( Gilbert and Masucci , 1 99 9 ) . The researchers classify
their project as " action research " to acknowledge its significant component
of political activism. The project's feminist epistemology is demonstrated
not only through the centering of how gender roles, relations, and identities
influence the situations of poor people, but also through the positions of
the researchers and their students as facilitators of political change. There
fore, ali stages of the research process are intertwined with activism,
teaching, the functions of the KWRU, and empowerment of poor people.
For instance, Gilbert brings materials about the KWRU to professional
talks, Gilbert and Masucci co-teach a " service learning" course in which
students get experience with and simultaneously learn about community
organizing and uneven development in cities, the researchers' students
record poor people's testimonials to document abuses and conditions,
Gilbert and Masucci have used their expertise and access to technology to
set up an information management system to catalogue these testimonials,
an interna! website was developed to display data for other poor people to
use, and severa! workshops have been run by KWRU with assistance from
the researchers and their students ( Gilbert, personal communication,
November, 2000 ) .
I n this project, i t is virtually impossible t o separare out the many ways
that a feminist epistemology has saturated the research or even to identify
clearly what the " representation of results " means. By sharing the process
of knowledge production between researchers, students, KWRU members,
and poor people themselves in a fluid and recursive manner, Gilbert and
Masucci demonstrate that there is a great potential for the rich nuances of
diverse experiences to be explored and represented, not by a single,
privileged authorial voice, but through a more collective effort resulting in
reflective narratives, policy directives, theory-building, and political
empowerment.
Beyond Gender to Mu/tiple Forms o f Oppression
Feroinists concerned priroarily with gender quickly discovered that it was

very difficult to talk about the oppression of woroen without also roaking
reference to racisro, heterosexisro, and oppression based on disability,
religion, age, culture, class and other forros of difference. Fighting oppres
sion on one axis roakes little sense when there are roultiple forces at work
and the effects of each are iropossible to separate. Is a particular woroan
l iving in a poor neighborhood and working at a low-wage job because
she is a woroan? Because she is Latina ? Because she and her family have
always been poor ? Because she has a disability that limits her job and
housing options ? These things are impossible to separate out in a single
woroan's life because they are so deeply intertwined in her identity and
her experiences of these things are inseparable due to roultiple forros of
oppression. Consider your own identity - are you able to separate your
gender froro your race, froro your class, froro your religion, froro your
sexuality, from your age ? Or are they ali mixed up together in your sel{?
This is the realization that feroinists have come to ( slowly) and has forced
us to think not only of how to challenge gender oppression, both politi
cally and academically, but also how sexism is j ust one aspect of a kal
eidoscope of oppressions that require a united strategy of analysis and
critique.
Anderson ( 1 99 5 ) suggests that we must extend our view from j ust
gender to include the many and varied forms of oppression that are
socially and spatially constructed. This extension forces us to ask research
questions differently ( " How are gender and race twined together in peo
ple's experiences ? " ) , suggests a re-evaluation of our data collection pro
cedures and the methods we use for analysis and interpretation, demands
that we represent our research in ways that are sensitive to ali the multi
farious forms of oppression that influence the processes, people, and
events we study, and, ultimately, makes us reconsider the ways that
knowledge and truth are socially and spatially constructed, produced, and
critiqued.
A C K N OW L E D G E M E N T S
The a uthor thanks Pamela Moss for insightful comments, patience, a n d support
duri ng the writing of this chapter. Thanks too to Melissa Gilbert for giving me a
wi nd ow into her and Michele Masucci's Kensington proj ect, and to anonymous
re vie wers for helpful comments. In memory of Sara and Emily, who would have
been very good feminists.
56 MEG HAN COPE
RESEARCH TIP
Gai n i ng Access to Research Partici pants
• Make a cold call.

• Use your contacts (networking) .
• Obtain documentation outlining institutional support for your
project.
• Prepare a brief description of your research project for quick
distribution.
• Be prepared to substantiate your credentials.
• Follow up on initial forays into making research contacts, i.e. don't
leave someone hanging and don't make undeliverable promises.
• Produce information requested by interviewee promptly.
• Customize contact letters.
• Demonstrate the value of potential interviewees' participation in
your project.
• Gather appropriate information to demonstrate awareness of the
fit of the potential participant in the research project.
• Be persistent.
4
The Difference Feminism Makes:

Researching U nemployed Women
in an Australian Region
Louise C. ]ohnson
I am a geographer and a feminist who has been doing feminist geography

far more than ten years. This has involved documenting the patriarchal
economy of Australia's textile industry (Johnson, 1 99 0 ) , reading the gen
dered spaces of suburban houses and shopping centers (Johnson, 1 99 3 ,
2 0 0 0 ) a n d uncovering t h e politics of difference on Melbourne's urban
fringe (Johnson, 1 994a, 1 994b). Each of these feminist and geographical
projects has been structured by a further theoretical perspective: socialist,
postmodernist or postcolonial feminism. The research in each case - the
questions asked, the methods adopted, the conclusions reached and the
style of presentation - ali varied as a result, but their feminism remained
constant. As such, each research project was underpinned by sorne passion
ately held assumptions: that gender matters, that women are both different
from men and oppressed by them, and there is an obligation not only to
describe this situation but also to change it. Doing feminist geography
research for me therefore has involved a set of clear and prescriptive
guidelines that have no doubt colored the research process. The fore
grounding of such assumptions along with the active place of the researcher
within the process are two of the great strengths of a feminist approach.
However, as a result of assessing feminist research grants and by reflecting
on my own recent work, 1 am increasingly convinced that such assumptions
- or subject positions - present profound limitations. Assessing feminist
rese arch applications has led to a spirited questioning by others - usually
n on-fe minists - of the predetermined nature of this research such that there
a pp ear s to be no real testing of patriarchy if it is already assumed. And it
h as proveo difficult to dismiss such arguments, raising real questions about
the rigor and veracity of such feminist research. Reflections on my current
research into women 's unemployment have raised similar questions on the
politics of doing feminist research - the power relations involved and the
LO U I S E C . J O H N S O N
assumptions made. These questions have converged o n the process of

recruiting and working with a female research assistant and in analyzing
interviews with a group of unemployed women whose age, class, disability
and ethnicity appeared more significant than their gender in shaping their
experiences. The results thus far of such reflections are presented below.
The Project: Research i ng U nemp loyed Women In an

Australian Reglon
For sorne years now 1 ha ve been researching the place of women in regional
labor markets, focused on the city of Geelong - a center of 1 60,000 people
70 kilometers west of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. Most recently 1
have located this work within a postmodern framework that details the
role of ethnicity, age, physical and mental capacity, education and geo
graphical location in shaping women's entry into the labor force and
employment-related identity. The project began by correlating national to
regional trends in employment change. This overview confirmed the move
ment of the city's economy from manufacturing - car and truck building
and the making of textiles, clothing and footwear - to one based on
business, community, personal, recreational and tourism services. Such an
excursion into census tabulations was not particularly feminist beyond its
focus on the gendered patterns of these employment changes (a feminist
empiricism) ; though it was geographical in its concern with the regional
specificities of national trends. Having set the general economic context,
the project's main aim was to record through face-to-face interviews the
experience of a differentiated sample of women as they attempted to enter
or re-enter the expanding service sector. Here the objective was to docu
ment employment histories, record women's transition from unpaid to paid
work and uncover the many aspects of identity mobilized in such a move
for mature aged, young, non-English-speaking and disabled women . The
academic context was literature on regional restructuring and feminist
debates on identity formation and difference. A paid research assistant
conducted the main work of interviewing women.
The Relatlons h l p : Pos iti o n l n g the Researchers
How the research was conducted is related to the changing nature of

enquiry within the academy. An increasing imperative within the cash
starved Australian university system is the measurement of research prow
ess not by publications, editorial activity, supervision of research students,
contribution to public debate or professional conferences, but by winning
TH E D I FFERENCE FEMI N I SM MAKES 59
competitive funding. Research proj ects are therefore driven less by intellec
rual curiosity than by the need to assemble a team that can secure a hefty
budget for travel, equipment, and paid staff, preferably from outside the
university. Not only <loes this system change the way research is conceptu
alized but it also builds into it a labor relation between employer and
em p loyee which for many women researchers is a major challenge. For
myse lf as socialist and feminist from a working-class background, this shift
produced a number of dilemmas . lt took sorne years to rethink the research
I had been doing into a forro that required funding but even longer to come
to terms with the politics of employing someone to do the research. And
this was primarily an issue of class - in that as a socialist 1 saw the
employee-employer relationship as essentially an exploitative one. The idea
of entering into an employment contraer as well as a collegial research
relationship was oxymoronic and a source of ongoing moral tension. lt
meant problems in recruiting people - in that 1 didn't really want to do it,
sa w it as a way to help " needy" others (with money, training or experience )
- and in giving direction - as 1 was often guilt stricken over the idea of
anyone doing the research 1 should be doing. And in this there was also a
sense of loss and of alienation from the research process. Far now someone
else was taking over a highly personal agenda and in the process inevitably
compromising a style that was highly intuitive, pleasure driven and one
which had benefited as much from random events as from systematic
enquiry. Employing someone to do my research work therefore appeared
to inevitably create an exploitative labor relation, produce research that
was not my own, that was not as " good " as 1 could do and robbed me of
the pleasures as well as the agonies of its doing.
These anxieties led to ongoing ambivalence in the relationships 1 devel
oped with a number of research assistants. They led to selecting the
" wrong" people to employ - driven by needy cases and friendships rather
than by rigorous appraisals of who was experienced in giving research
assistance - and to employees who floundered as a result of poor direction,
non-existent timelines and unclear outcomes. lt also produced large
amounts of data which have never been analyzed - good in quality but
created at a distance, without the immediacy or urgency of a project driven
b y personal passion which develops its own drive for analysis and a closure.
Th ere was also the pressure to move from one budget year to the next,
fr om one project to another, so that the time needed to amass information,
si ft it, think about it, and write about it <loes not exist, swallowed as it is
b y the need to do the next grant application and project. The financia!
i mper atives driving much research work in Australian universities have,
th er efo re, produced a whole series of dilemmas. lt has taken me sorne time
to le arn how to be a manager of research and of people - to be an employer
as w ell as an academic. Who to employ and under what conditions remains
60 LO U I S E C . J O H N S O N
a n ongoing issue for me as a socialist feminist researcher, though the labor

relation aspect is far easier as a result of now heading a department with
forty staff !
Having successfully dealt with the moral dilemmas associated with
actually employing someone and directing them into a viable research
proj ect, the issue for the work on unemployed women in Geelong was
recruitment and the nature of the relationship. As a feminist whose
research focus was on identity issues and the experiences of unemployed
women, 1 saw it as obvious and desirable to employ a woman with
relevant experience, feminist politics and connections into the group to be
interviewed. 1 had worked in Geelong first on my PhD in the 1 9 80s,
examining the fate of women and men in the city's textile industry (John
son, 1 990) and had subsequently done research on social polarization in
the city and on its shift from a manufacturing to a service economy
(Johnson, 1 9 94a,b, 1 9 96 ) . 1 also had worked with a community employ
ment service provider writing a pamphlet arguing for the importance of
the regional perspective in understanding Australia's unemployment prob
lem (Johnson, 1 997) . lt was from this latter connection that 1 carne in
contact with Catherine Newton - the unemployed wife of one of the
workers who had commissioned the pamphlet - who effectively became
the partner investigator in this project. A vailability and personal contacts
therefore led to a mature aged woman; a trained psychologist who had
worked as a financia! counselor within a number of community employ
ment agencies for unemployed women in Geelong. Her age, professional
training and links into the relevant community networks meant that there
was a real professional equality between myself and Cathie, the research
assistant. But these same characteristics meant there were class and other
differences - of knowledge, professional standing, and association with
employers and charitable agencies - between Cathie and those being inter
viewed. Past experience with the employment agencies as a counselor
meant that she had occupied a position of sorne power over but had also
supported women using the agencies. Further, her educational and pro
fessional background meant a real distance existed between respondents
and interviewer. However, through her sensitivity, social commitment and
counseling experience, these social barriers were actively negotiated and
assisted in creating an atmosphere in which personal information could be
shared. We would meet regularly to talk about these issues and Cathie
made it routine to write clown the " methodological dilemmas " she
encountered. Awareness and articulation of such standpoints is a funda
mental and invaluable requirement of any feminist research proj ect; posi
tioning the researchers as well as their " data . " The exact impact of these
positions on the data generated though is far harder to determine. Did it
lead to more profound questioning or more guarded answers ? 1 have no
T H E D I FFERENCE FEMI N I SM MAKES 61
wa y of knowing for this project. However, the importance of the sex,

p ro fessional training, class position and outlook of any research assistant
compared to another working on the same question would be a worthy
research proj ect in itself; to detail the ways in which the data varied ( or
di d not) as a consequence.
The choice of such a research assistant raised a number of issues as the
p ro ject unfolded. As we carne from a similar class and professional
background, had comparable commitments to feminism and to the worthi
ness of the project, it became a relationship that was more of an equitable
partnership than an employer-employee relation . This resulted in a sense
of co-operation and equality of skill and expertise that made meetings easy
an d honest debate possible. Indeed at sorne point in the future - when both
of our work lives are simpler - we are committed to co-authoring papers
from the material generated. However, there were also down-sides to this
relationship as it inevitably remained one of employer and employee - so
chat each meeting would involve personal gossip, talk of the proj ect and a
sharing of thoughts; but also the reporting of work done and the signing
of time sheets by her for me. Even more seriously, the initial grant
application of A $ 8 ,300 had been trimmed to A$5,300. As the research
grant was primarily to employ a research assistant to conduct interviews
and process the results, the reduction in funds meant that a half-time job
had to be reduced to one day per week and remunerated at an hourly rate
rather than as a salary. This led to far more administration and insufficient
paid time to complete the task. The outcome was a reduction in the project
scope - a cut in the number of interviews from 50 to 10 - and supplemen
tary funding to remunerare a research assistant who became deeply com
mitted to the project and willing to work for its successful completion
rather than money! Timing of the project also meant that monies had to be
spent in a particular calendar year, yet the work extended into the next. To
deal with this, an advance payment for work occurred; but it is doubtful if
ali the work that was subsequently done was truly paid for. This outcome
was the result of the partnership and caring for the feminist cause that was
part and parce! of our relationship and the proj ect itself. However it was
also bad employment and feminist practice and offers a cautionary tale for
orhe rs.
A further issue is who then "owns" the data generated? We collectively
generated the two question schedules - one to collect sorne basic demo
graphic data and a longer set of interview questions - but then Cathie did
ali of the preliminary questionnaires, the longer interviews and then
tr an sc ribed the interviews. lt was only at this point that 1 re-entered the
pr oje ct, to " analyze " the questionnaires and the interviews . In this process
an d in writing up the " results , " 1 have asserted ownership over the
i nfor m ation and effectively claimed ir as my own. The tendency to obliter-
ate the labor that generated i t i s understandable but inappropriate i n any

research - feminist or otherwise.
The l nterviews: Positi o n i ng the Data
The interview phase of the project proceeded in two stages - the first was
to elicit basic demographic information which would allow a structured
sampling process and the second was a longer in-depth semi-structured
interview. Before the research could proceed it had to be approved by the
Deakin University Ethics Committee. This group insisted on a " Plain
English Statement" of the proj ect which in turn formed the basis of an
informed consent form: a signed statement giving permission for the
interviews to occur, affirming the right of participants to withdraw at any
stage and to have their privacy protected in the storage and publication of
the results. The participants were recruited by gaining the permission of
employment service managers who specifically dealt with women from a
range of backgrounds (differentiated by age, location, ethnic background
and physical ability) and then by using posters and direct invitations from
workers in the agencies. Eventually 3 8 women agreed to fill in a preliminary
questionnaire about their background and indicated their willingness to be
interviewed for a longer period. A summary of the characteristics of those
women is provided in figure 4 . 1 .
While i n n o sense can this group o f women b e designated and discussed
as a representative sample of unemployed women in Geelong, the 38 who
agreed to participare in the first phase of this project give sorne insight into
female unemployment in this region . In particular, the profile in figure 4. 1
suggests that you are more likely to be an unemployed woman in Geelong
if you are:
• Australian born but with an over-representation of migrants. Thirty

four percent of those unemployed were born overseas yet this group
comprises only 22 percent of the population.
• Over 40.
• Have less than 1 2 years of education.
• Come from a household with an extremely low income level. 65 percent
of those who indicated their household income put it at below $200
per week when the average income for an individual in Australia in
1 999 was c.$650 per week.
• And have been unemployed for more than one year.
What such dimensions meant for the women concerned was explored in
ten in-depth interviews . The schedule asked for the employment history of
TH E D I F F E R E N C E F EM I N I S M MAKES 63
each woman and probed the ways in which their ethnicity, age, gender,
class, location and physical capacity had influenced that history. As the
core question of the project was the perceived and actual effect of such
d imensions on employment, the sample was stratified on the basis of age,
ethnicity, location, education leve!, household income and physical ability
( see table 4. 1 ) .
Central to the project was the question of how the identity of these
women was constructed - by themselves, by the employment service
agencies, by partners, by the Department of Social Security, potential and
actual employers - and how these identities impacted on their job search.
This centrality was driven by recent feminist and postmodern literature
that posits identity as fluid, contested and contextual ( see far example
Butler, 1 990; Gibson , 1 996; Gibson-Graham, 1 99 6 ) . I proposed that such
a view could well contrast with what women experience when they report
to government bureaucracies, <leal with employment agencies, decide who
will do the housework and child care and negotiate the job market; in that
as a feminist I assumed that gender mattered above ali other dimensions of
social difference. The main research questions therefore became:
1 What <loes the experiences of ten women say about the nature of service
sector employment in an Australian regional center ?
2 How is identity constructed in the job search, by whom and with what
effects ?
3 How central to identity and workforce location are gender, age, class,
ethnicity and physical ability ?
The answers to these questions will b e explored i n detail elsewhere. Here I

concentrate on the last question and the light it sheds on the assumptions,
or my positionality, as someone doing Feminist Geography research.
ldentlty lssues: Pos ltl o n l ng the S u bjects
Looking at how these women see themselves, Cathie and the jointly
developed interview schedule asked far a detailed employment history,
w hile a set of specific questions explored how being a woman, of a certain
ag e, ethnicity and physical ability affected the job search and employment.
The details of the research, its purpose and an informed consent form were
gi ve n to ali involved. While such a direct approach could be criticized far
not probing deeply into the many dimensions which shape work force
activity, the responses were revealing and can be read in a transparent as
w ell as a deconstructive way to come to similar conclusions.
What emerged most strongly from the interviews - done in two stages
Figure 4.1 Profi l es of u n emp loyed women p resenting to agencies in Geelong,
Austral ia, M arch 1 999
30 (a) Bi rthplace •
24
20
10
7
Australia England Croatia ltaly Netherlands Spain U K/US
• Ethnicity was addressed i n a n u mber of ways: by birthplace (registered above), through main
language spoken al home (which produced only English), with primary culture identification
(which produced a difieren! pattern to "bi rthplace": Australian 30; English 2; G reek 1 ; Croatian 1 ;
ltalian 1 ; German 1 ; and Span ish 1 ) .
10 (b) Age
9
8
8 7
7 6 6
6
5
4
4 3
3 2
2
o
20- 24 25- 29 3 0- 34 3 5- 39 40- 44 45- 49 50- 54 5 5- 60 Unstated
15 (e) Education 14
Year 8 Year 9 Year 1 O Year 1 1 Year 1 2 Trade Assoc. Bus. Univ. Unknown
Dip. Cert.
20 (d) Household (A$/wk)
16
15 13
10
1 - 1 99 200- 399 400- 599 600 -799 800-1 000 > 1 000 Unstated
(e) l ncomes sources

15
15
10 9
Disability Support Newstart Parenting Partner Unstated

Pension Allowance
15 (f) Time unemployed
10
1 -6 6- 1 2 1- 3 3- 5 >5 years l ntermittent Unstated

months months years years
(h) Rural/urban 30
25 (g) No. of dependents 30
22
20
15
10
6
5
o 2 3 Unstated Rural Coastal town U rban/city

Table 4.1 Respo ndents i n s u rvey of unemployed women i n Geelong, Austral ia, Apri l-J uly 1 999
No. Age Birt.hplace Rura//Urban Disability Education Time unemployed lncome (A$/wk)
45-49 Australia Ru ral DSP• Bus. Cert. 6-1 2 months 200 -400
2 40-44 Austral ia Ru ral No ne U niversity l ntermittent 1 -1 99
3 3 5-39 England U rban No ne Trade Cert. 3 - 5 years 400- 600
4 40-44 ltaly U rban None Year 1 1 5 years 200 -400
5 20-24 Croatia U rban DSP Year 1 0 6 months 400 - 600
6 50-60 Austral ia U rban No ne U nstated 1 ntermittent 1 - 1 99
7 3 5-39 Croatia U rban No ne Year 1 0 3 months 1 - 1 99
8 40-44 Austral ia Ru ral No ne Year 1 0 3 years 1 - 1 99
9 50-54 Netherlands U rban No ne Year 1 0 l ntermittent 1 -1 99
10 2 5-29 Australia U rban DSP Year 1 1 2-3 years 1 - 1 99
ª DSP refers to the Disability Support Pension

T H E D I F F E R E N C E F E M I N I S M MA K E S 67
0ver the space of three months to track the success of their job search -
was the importance of being women to their understanding of that experi
e n ce. So for example, S notes of her second foil-time job as a bookkeeper
fo r a solicitar: "The job had originally been offered to a bloke who didn't
take it. So it was offered to me at much lower wages. 1 wasn't worried as 1
was happy to ha ve a job. Men always got more than women. " In answer
ro the question " How has being a woman affected your job search ? " S
co ntinues: " Fifty to sixty percent decrease in opportunity. Ninety-nine
pe rcent choose a male over a female . . . Females don't get a better
opp ortunity. A woman is expected to have word processing and typing
sk ills but a woman also has to pick up children or go home if they are sick.
You can pick that up in job interviews. 1 don't fit that stereotype. "
She comments o n the complexity of gender roles a few months later as
she reflects on her successfol bookkeeping business : " I am looking forward
to the foture. 1 think the way 1 live will be directly related to the amount of
work 1 put into my business . . . 1 think small businesses are growing . . . .
Pay is reasonable. More women are running these types of business . . . .
We have sold ourselves the wrong message. 1 would have liked to have
srayed home. 1 don't think it is fair on the child. Women want more in the
house, the two cars etc. Children should give yo u a sen se of self. Men j ust
expect women to have multiple roles. "
S also expected multiple roles o f herself - o f businesswoman, mother,
homemaker and woman of independent means. However, ali of these
dimensions are based on her sense of self as a woman who has been treated
in a particular way within the job market and at home because of her sex.
So too with V, who has done a range of jobs - including working at a
service station, for a security firm, as an accounts clerk, census collecting
and doing reception work and house cleaning - but who sees herself
primarily as a mother. It is with this role that she identified and around
which her paid work had to fit. She tells her story: "I left school when 1
was sixteen because 1 had a job . . . in an office doing accounts . . . . 1 had
that job for 1 1 years . . . then 1 got a part-time job with a security firm -
cash accounting, making up payrolls. 1 left this job after 1 8 months as 1
was pregnant . . . 1 worked in an office of the service station during the
sch ool holidays and then did a cleaning job . . . 1 wouldn't travel to
Melbourne and 1 don't want a foil-time job because of [my] kid's needs. "
Often when asked the direct question o n whether being a woman
matte red in their job search and experience, women replied " No," but then
fre que ntly went on to contradict their own j u dgments. For example R said:
" I do n't think being a woman has affected my job search . 1 don't know
w h et her it would be any different from a woman or a man. Because I've
b een in machining and now in admin . . . . lt's a woman's area . There has
b een no challenge to be against blokes . "
And G , who had been i n the military, teaching, o n a newspaper and in

security observed: "1 can't see that being a woman has any effect on my
work . The only time [was when 1 went] to a security firm. 1 have a shooter's
license so 1 met the requirements. Ali they wanted was a communications
worker . . . but 1 was knocked back for being a woman. They gave ali sorts
of excuses, but 1 met ali of the criteria . "
S o too with B who i s a trained teacher working part time with the
elderly: "I don't really know how being a woman has affected my job
search. 1 don 't really know that it has had a lot of bearing - probably
because of the type of work I'm looking for is within a woman's field. "
Complicating but not overwhelming gender - in fact adding to its
potency - are the dual issues of parenting and age. And the importance of
age is most evident when a woman turns 40. S notes: " Hospitality work is
easy to get but for younger people. People under 40 get jobs and males
against females . . . . [You are] told that it will be a plus [to be over 40] but
1 haven 't found this. Employers often take looks into account. A younger
person looks attractive. A lot of time looks come into it. They like the
trendy young ones. A lot of the employers, even the employers are younger
than me. 1 have gone to interviews where 1 am ten years older than ali of
them. If 1 was the boss 1 would probably pick the young one . . . . Age has
affected my career. We are living in a time where retirement age is lower.
In restructuring people of a certain age get shoved aside. We should be
considering older people; they ha ve the experience behind them. "
This is also the case for R who has worked as a machinist and has been
looking for clerical work for three years: "I think once you're over 40 and
a woman they think, 'what's the point ? ' . . . O nce you're in your 40s you
are over the hill. 1 really feel like in the elderly group. 1 think it should be
better when you're in your 40s - you don't have young children, or the
hassles of young life and you're more in tune. Sometimes they like younger
women because they're more attractive and thinner. "
There were also the issues of ethnicity, the migration experience, edu
cation type and leve!, but these, too, for the feminist researcher can be
related to gender. So for H: "I carne from Holland and didn't go to school
until 1 was seven years old, when 1 carne to Australia. Until 1 was seven 1
kept the house. My brother went to school but girls stayed home . . . . If
you have an education it is easier to get a job. In my day you only got a
little choice - cooking, sewing, secretaria!, Coles or Woollies or waitressing.
The education 1 received at school was not good for job search . That type
of education is only good for getting married . . . . 1 don't think being a
woman has affected my job search. There are plenty of men out of work . "
For T, being born overseas was critica! to her chances o f getting work,
as an accent in her English continually went against her. She also left
school at 1 5 " because my mother told me that education was wasted on
THE D I FFERENCE FEMI N I SM MAKES 69
g ir ls" and proceeded to work in secretaria) and clerical positions before

mi grating. On her job search she notes: " lt's easy to get a job in fast foods
b e cause of the cheap labor. Receptionist jobs are hard to get. 1 think my
accent is a problem. 1 was told that nobody understands me. People with
th e gift of the gab get the jobs. They can talk their way into them; it
doesn't mean they can do the job . . . . 1 once had a mock interview and he
rold me to change my accent. He said 1 didn't pronounce my words
correctly. "
While a small sample, my analysis of these words confirms the import
ance of gender in the self-perception, identity and work force activity (and
frustrating inactivity) of these unemployed women. Combined with their
location in a particular part of the service sector - in the lower end, part
time casualized part of it - their experiences affirm the extraordinary leve)
of economic and social inequality, which still pervades Geelong, and, 1
would argue, the rest of Australia.
The Difference Fem i n i s m Makes
As a socialist feminist researcher my focus is on women, while my key

assumption is that the patriarchal economy - that system of labor expend
iture, appropriation and reward which tends to systematically advantage
men over women - shapes women's experiences of unemployment and re
employment. In this project, research design - the methods used, the choice
of research assistant and respondents, the questions asked and the analysis
- followed from this assumption. However, 1 am also a feminist highly
engaged with the postmodern and postcolonial critique of socialism and
identity politics. As such 1 accept the importance of considering multiple
self-definitions and the complex constitution of identity. Together, these
assumptions led to the design of this project - to explore the relative
i mportance of gender, ethnicity, age and disability on women's employment
histories. However, positioning myself primarily a feminist, the research
design and the interviews have led to one conclusion: that a focus on
women exposed not so much their multiple and fractured identities but the
i mp ortance of gender and women's ongoing oppression. The conclusion
th at gender is the main determinant of women's labor market experience is
indeed the difference feminism makes, but it also raises sorne profound
questions about the nature of my feminist research standpoint. 1 would
argue that my feminist position, choice of research assistant and research
methods predetermined this outcome and need to be radically reassessed to
admit the possibility of being proved wrong! Postmodern feminism has to
acknowledge that gender may not always be the main determinant, while
t echniques - quantitative and qualitative - must allow the real possibility
70 LO U I S E C . J O H N SO N
o f gender being relatively unimportant. Far i n the case o f the interviews

described above, a serious admission of ethnicity, disability and age into
the explanatory framework could have produced a very different
conclusion.
So, far example, consider the experience of B, the most highly educated
of the unemployed women talked to. She completed high school and
trained successfully as a primary school teacher - a career choice made by
many more women than men; a highly gendered decision. She then had a
number of years teaching and began postgraduate study. However, her
studies had to be deferred owing to " family circumstances. " Shortly
thereafter, a series of untreated ear infections led to partial deafness and
initially to her leaving work in schools and, as the problem worsened, an
end to current work with the elderly and attempts to break into hospitality.
Not only is the disability proving a hindrance to her identification and
pursuit of employment opportunities, but so too is age and a further
accident which has impaired lifting ability. She tells her story:
1
was at HC from 1970 to 1995 - 1 had junior primary and then 1 did work
as a remedia! support teacher from prep to grade six. 1 left because my
hearing had dropped. 1 then did remedia! work but the funding was cut . . .
lt's not that 1 can't each anymore. lt's that running a discussion group had
become difficult because of my hearing loss . . . . 1 don't really know how
being a woman has affected my job search. 1 don't really know that it has
had a lot of bearing. Probably because of the type of work I'm looking for is
within a women's field. My age has had a lot more bearing, because 1 think
that sorne employers are wondering why 1 am working at my age or if 1 was
going to leave . . . . Disability ? That has not actually been said to me at an
interview, but with sorne part-time work it has come up. They never ask me
in an interview - it is in my covering letter about the loss. Having the hearing
loss has made the interview situations more difficult.
[Three months later after an accident which signaled osteoporosis] 1 can
only do light duties. Looking for a job will now be much harder because of
my health . . . Many of my options have closed, but 1 would like to complete
the course and tie up what 1 am doing. My capacity to look for work has
changed.
So far B, while gender has clearly shaped her educational and employment
choices, it is now primarily issues concerned with her age and illness that
are shaping her employment history. lt is a postmodern story of multiple
identities and oppressions with gender not at its center ali of the time. But
yet ir is a particularly female story; one perhaps best apprehended by a
researcher with multiple identities as a socialist, postmodernist, and
feminist!
PART 1 : S T U DY MATE R I A L 71
S T U D Y M AT E R I A L FOR TA K I N G O N
F E M I N I ST R E S E A R C H
WORDS
B i n ary th i n k i n g
Colon ial i s m / postcolon ialism
Context
E m p i ricism
E piste mology
F e m i n ism
F e m i n ist geography
G e nder re lations
H u manism
Legiti mation
Mascu l i n ism
Methodology
N arrative
O bjectivity
O p pression
Patriarchy
Positivism
Power
Privilege
Representation
Second wave/th i rd wave fem i n ism
Situated kn owledges
Standpoint theory
Text
Val idity
'.l U ESTIO N S
n what ways can you see feminist research practices transforming

;e ogr ap hy? What possibilities might feminist geography bring to
e m i nis m ?
Dev elop a working definition o f feminism. Of feminist geography. O f
e mi nist research in geography. Revisit your definitions a n d pull o u t truth
72 F E M I N I ST P E DA G O G Y WO R K I N G G R O U P
claims about knowledge. I s it possible to identify any particular type of

feminism ? Feminist epistemology ? Feminist praxis ?
Severa! of the authors make clear that they see an intrinsic contradiction
between feminism and the system within which academics work. In what
practices do you see this contradiction emerging ? What sorts of resolutions
are you comfortable with ?
Think about ways that your multiple positionings have affected your
learning experiences in the classroom, in doing research, and in applying
your knowledge. What ways have you witnessed forms of knowledge and
social relations being legitimized ? lnvalidated ? Accepted ? Challenged ?
Reproduced ? Contested ? Destabilized ?
E N GAG E D EXERCISES
Manifestations of power and knowledge
Think through how productions of power and knowledge manifest them

selves in specific places and record your general impressions. Then draw a
map of places you frequent or mark a map of your campus, your home,
your workplace, or your home town and identify the various intersections
of power influencing these places. Consider factors such as how you access,
navigate, and experience these spaces, the contextualized meanings each
space evokes, and what sets of power relations affect your reading.
Share your maps and interpretations. Are there common themes emerg
ing about how power and knowledge manifest in the various places
mapped? In what ways is each map unique ? What can you say about the
manifestations of power and knowledge in specific spaces and places ?
Comparing types of research
Create a table with a grid of five cells across and eight cells clown. Across
the top, beginning in column 2, list various orientations of research, as for
example, feminist, marxist, positivist, and poststructuralist. Or, perhaps list
various types of feminist research, as for example, socialist feminism,
postructurally informed feminism, second wave feminism, and empiricist
feminism. Down the side, beginning in row 2, list aspects of the research
process that are influenced in sorne way by the choice of research orienta
tion. For example, list truth claims, types of research methods favored,
sources of inspiration, types of research questions that are asked, research
employment and mentoring practices, types of political action, and any
other aspect that you find significant in the research process.
PART 1 : S T U DY MAT E R I A L 73
Fill in each cell according to the orientation of the research (across the
ro p ) and the aspect of the research process affected ( clown the side ) . With
a lea rning partner, discuss the inclusions, exclusions, absences, overlaps,
con tradictions, and paradoxes in the cells.
S U G G ESTE D F U RT H E R REA D I N G
Fa r a n nice introductory overview o f methods a n d methodologies i n

fe minist geographies read the chapter in Feminist Geographies ( Madge et
al . , 1 9 97). Good places to start in trying to understand the ways in which
fe minist geographers are engaging methodological issues within feminist
geography include: the short edited theme papers appearing in Canadian
Geographer ( 1 99 3 ) , Professional Geographer ( 1 994, 1 995, 200 1 ) , and
A ntipode ( 1 99 5 ) ; the " Methodology " section of Thresholds in Feminist
Geography (Jones, Nast and Roberts, 1 997b ) ; and the methodology chap
ter in Linda McDowell's book, Gender, Identity and Place ( 1 9 9 9 ) .
Arising o u t of t h e study o f t h e politics of t h e production of knowledge
are issues about the challenge to Cartesian dualisms, power and privilege,
and feminism in physical geography. Although somewhat dated as a topical
review, Liz Bon di ( 1 992 ) addresses gender and binary thinking in feminist
geography. This piece is useful in understanding how feminists are thinking
about how binary thinking affects scholarship. Gillian Rose ( 1 99 3 ) pro
poses paradoxical space in Feminism and Geography as a way to under
stand and work through dichotomies. Vera Chouinard and Ali Grant
( 1 9 9 5 ) talk about power and privilege within feminist geography and how
disabled women and lesbians have been " left out" of the feminist project.
Gillian Rose ( 1 997) critiques feminist geographers' attempts to date in the
literature on dealing with power within the research process. Ciare Madge
and Anna Bee ( 1 99 9 ) argue that gender is a considerably important set of
relations shaping how physical geography exists within the academy. Sheryl
Luzzadder-Beach and Allison MacFarlane (2000) look at the differences in
the practice of physical geography for women and men . The articles in
Professional Geographer (200 1 ) look at how women in geography have
struggled to be there.
There are a number of feminists writing about feminist epistemology in
th e so cial sciences and humanities that are shaping ideas about the politics
of k no wledge production within feminist geography. One key piece is
D on na Haraway's ( 1 9 8 8 ) article on situated knowledges. Patricia Ewick
( 1 9 94 ) shows how to integra te feminist epistemologies in to undergraduate
re se ar ch. Parvati Raghuram, Ciare Madge and Tracey Skelton ( 1 99 8 )
di sc uss the pedagogical implications o f doing feminist research in under
g ra du ate geography courses . Sorne other writings we found useful in
looking at feminist methodology generally in our studies are: Harding,

1 9 8 7a, 1 99 1 , 1 992; Fonow and Cook, 1 991 ; Alcoff and Potter, 1 993;
Wolf, 1 996; McDowell and Sharp, 1 997; and Devault, 1 999.
Finding papers of interest in geography journals is another way to
enhance familiarity with the ways feminists approach various tapies. Perus
ing the pages of Gender, Place and Culture, Antipode, Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space, Environment and Planning A, and the
]ournal of Geography in Higher Education might give you more concrete
ideas on how to set up a feminist geography research project.
Part 1 1
Th inking about Feminist Research
Delimiting Language ?
Short 2 Putting Feminist Geography into Practice
Gender, Place and Culture: Paradoxical Spaces?
Liz Bondi
5 Paradoxical Space: Geography, Men, and D uppy Feminism
David Butz and Lawrence D. Berg
6 Toward a More Fully Reflexive Feminist Geography
Karen Falconer Al-Hindi and Hope Kawabata
7 People Like Us: Negotiating Sameness and Difference in the Research
Process
Gil/ Va/entine
Study Material for Thinking about Feminist Research
Delimiting Language?
When thinking about feminist research, there seems to be no escaping from

pages and pages of text, saturated with the dense language of theory.
Arguments ensue as to whether such practice is liberatory or elitist. On the
one hand, is there a problem with feminism as a social movement when,
because of feminist theory's seemingly indecipherable vocabulary, so many
of its texts exclude ali but a privileged academic elite ? Or, on the other
hand, are " new" terms like " subjectivity " and " positionality " - terms that
become meaningful only after one understands their context within a larger
academic debate - invaluable tools that allow us, as feminists, to imagine
new ways of understanding ourselves and society ? After long, detailed
discussions, drawing on experience in feminist organizing and severa! (types
of) academic degrees, our collective has concluded that the language of
contemporary theory is both emancipatory and confining, offering possi
bilities while at the same time limiting our choices. In writing this piece, we
wa nt to occupy this space of ambivalence: we want both to defend the
lan gu age of theory, which we feel has been integral in allowing us to grow
as thinkers, while acknowledging that its abstruseness and consequent
e x clusivity are indeed problematic.
At times, theoretical language sets up walls of exclusivity. In the drive to
crear e ever more specialized terminology to articulate previously neglected
e x p eri ence - the experiences of women, of people of color, of people with
differe nt sexual orientations, and of other groups of people made " differ
en t" through being marginalized by sorne social division of power - it is
ir o nic ally those whose experience initially provided the impetus to expand
� a n guage who are often relegated to the realm of the " theorized about . " At
Its b est, however, theoretical language provides tools for change. Feminist
78 F E M I N I ST P E D A G O G Y WO R K I N G G RO U P
research reminds u s that while a t times i t i s necessary to push theoretical

boundaries, we must also remain committed to the material, always
conscious of our study as research for, rather than merely on human
beings .
The language used in this book illustrates this tension between political
emancipation and theoretical elitism. In discussing each of the articles in
the following section, for example, different members of our collective
expressed varying levels of comfort with the way in which each of the
authors used theoretical language. Sorne argued that geography as a
discipline has been enriched by contributions of feminist scholarship with
the addition and use of terms ranging from "paradoxical space," to the
developing concept of " reflexivity," Yet questions lingered about whether
or not the authors could have conveyed their ideas just as clearly without
using abstraer or alienating terminology. A term such as " subj ectivity," for
example, continually surfaces in different guises throughout the chapters in
this section, making it an extremely difficult concept to come to terms with.
This could leave one wondering if the variances in meaning end up
clarifying or merely obfuscating what the authors are trying to express; and
yet, few other combinations of simpler words can convey such an array of
meaning with the elasticity and succinctness of this singular term.
To those of you who approach this new language with a healthy
suspicion, we can recommend only that you immerse yourself in it, if only
for a short while, before you decide whether to embrace or rej ect it. The
project of gaining fluency in " theory-speak " may be made easier if you
change your expectations surrounding how long it should take you to read
an article: if you normally read a page of text in ten minutes, expect to
take an hour. As you undoubtedly have noticed, your standard college
dictionary may not be of much use in helping you puzzle out the meaning
of specialized theoretical terms. We recommend that you purchase or gain
access to a dictionary of specialized geographical terms such as The
Dictionary of Human Geography (Johnson et al., 2000) or A Feminist
Glossary of Human Geography ( McDowell and Sharpe, 1 99 9 ) , which will
allow you to contextualize terms and ideas within a broader debate.
Remember that entering into theory is akin to walking into a conversation
that has been going on for decades and has developed its own points of
reference, inner debates, and, sometimes, " in-jokes , " so expect that your
learning curve will be quite steep as you make your way through your first
few articles.
On a less practica! leve!, as students with our own feelings of ambiva
lence about theory and its language, we recommend that you approa ch
language in theory not as unalterable dogma, but rather as a process to be
negotiated. The terminology of negotiation affords a more subtle, flexible
approach to the relationship between feminism and language. To negotiate
D E L I M I T I N G LAN G U A G E? 79
so mething irnplies not only a certain artful finding-of-one's way through a

p roblern, challenge, or dilernrna, but also an engagernent in dialogue with
others to reach a cornprornise, consensus, or agreernent. A brief exploration
0f the word's history lays to rest any hesitancy towards cornprornise as
either a sell-out or a quick fix, for the Latín roots of neg- (rneaning " not" )
and otium ( rneaning " leisure " ) rernind us that the journey will not be an
easy one. This <loes not mean that the journey is not worthwhile; in fact,
rhe difficulty associated with voicing sorne rnisgivings about language rnay
be the very thing that rnakes our efforts valuable, for it is out of this sense
of discornfort that learning, struggle, and action can arise.
Topically, the chapters in this section focus on identity, subjectivity,

positioning, and the practice of ferninist research. They introduce new
rerms, conceptualize processes in new ways, and provide new insights into
the ongoing discussion of how to go about thinking about ferninist research
in geography. David Butz and Lawrence Berg, in their propasa! to use
duppy ferninisrn as a rnetaphor for rnen's places in and rnasculine position
ings within ferninist geography, take up the notion of paradoxical space as
a place frorn which to engage in practica! action as well as an uneasy
grounding in a particular subject positioning. Karen Falconer Al-Hindi and
Hope Kawabata atternpt to work through how a feminist researcher can
becorne more fully reflexive, not only at the time of interaction with
research participants, but also as ferninist subjects within geography. Gill
Valentine suggests that putting theory into practice involves more than
being sensitive to the research process; it entails moving toward interpreting
various perforrnances of identity, both the researchers' and the research
participants' . Together these chapters cover a wide range of issues about
processes constituting difference, subj ectivity, and identity that have been
and will continue to be debated in ferninist rnethodology in geography.
Short 2 Putting Feminist Geograph y
into Practice
Gender, Place and Culture :

Paradoxical Spaces?
Liz Bondi
Feminists and feminisms have always occupied uneasy spaces within the
academy. Far sorne, the very idea of a feminist academic is a contradiction
in terms because such academic necessities as taking up a position of
academic authority - one whose knowledge is valued and privileged in a
distinctive way - militare against the anti-hierarchical, anti-elitist egalitari
anism integral to many versions of feminism ( far critica! discussion see far
example Bondi, 1 997; Friedman, 1 9 8 5 ; Hawkesworth, 1 98 9 ; Margan,
1 992 ) . More generally, feminists have amply demonstrated that academic
knowledge and academic practices are riddled with ideas and assumptions
that depend upan and generare gender inequalities and biases ( far classic
statements about science, philosophy, and geography respectively see Har
ding, 1 9 8 6 ; Lloyd, 1 9 84; Women and Geography Study Group, 1 9 8 4 ) .
Consequently, far women and men to acquire academic knowledge a n d to
perform successfully within the conventions of academic practice, we are
required to participare actively in the enactment and reproduction of gender
inequalities and biases. A couple of examples will illustrate the impossibility
of doing otherwise. First, if 1 wish to advance a feminist perspective on any
academic debate you choose to name, conventions demand that 1 demon
strate my understanding of existing contributions, and that 1 give serious
attention to texts widely recognized as " important" and " weighty . " In other
words my contribution must be situated in relation to existing traditions,
however steeped in misogyny, androcentrism, or gender-blindness these may
be, and 1 must, in effect, restare the importance and weightiness of these
traditions if my attempt to question them is to be taken seriously. Second, if
1 attempted to challenge every instance of gender bias 1 observe in my
working life, 1 would never rest, !et alone get on with the work 1 am paid to
do. In other words, 1 have to compromise my commitment to feminism in
ali aspects of my work including the most and the least routinized.
GENDER, PLA CE A NO CUL TURE 81
The word "compromise" has acquired both positive and negative inflec
ti on s. Positively, "compromise" is understood to entail a willingness to
s ettle differences " by mutual concession " ( Chambers Dictionary); nega
ti vely, it is understood as a neglect leading to " risk of inj ury, suspicion,
ce n sure or scandal" ( Chambers Dictionary). This doubled quality may help
to explain why the position of feminist academics is so often described as
co ntradictory, that is as " inconsistent" or as encompassing " two prop
os itions that cannot both be true" ( Chambers Dictionary ) .
This account of the position o f the feminist academic prompts the
question of why any of us do it! Such a question could be approached in
rnany ways, but what 1 want to suggest is that the impact of these various
cornpromises and contradictions depends upan whether they operate as
binary (mutually exclusive) oppositions or as paradoxes, that is as " self
contradictory statement[s] " which may appear to be " absurd " but which
rnight nevertheless also be "true " ( Chambers Dictionary ) . Clearly if on the
one hand " feminism" and " the academy " always operate as mutually
exclusive oppositions those of us who attempt to straddle the two will
forever be pulled apart. If, on the other hand, " feminism " and " the
academy" operate within the framework of paradox, then their uneasy
relationship might contain possibilities for " absurd" surprises and associ
ated pleasures.
My argument draws directly on the practices of one feminist academic
journal, namely Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geog
raphy, which Mona Domosh and 1 founded and for severa! years edited.
Preparatory work for the journal began in 1 992 and we swiftly secured the
interest of publishers Carfax, now part of the Taylor and Francis Group.
The first issue was published in 1 994. Mona stepped clown as editor after
the first four volumes and 1 continued for another two years, by which
time a new pair of editors - Lynn Staeheli and Gill Valentine - had taken
over. In this chapter 1 discuss sorne of the compromises that influenced the
development and character of the journal, suggesting that these might be
vie wed as illustrations of feminist efforts to operate both "within and
a gainst" the academy. This inconsistent and contradictory positioning can
ma ke life difficult, and on many occasions the conflicting demands of
aca de mic conventions and feminist values deeply felt by a few individuals
leaves the academy completely untouched. But 1 suggest that if the conflict
between what it takes to operate within the academy and what it takes to
ar g ue against it can be held as a paradox, then efforts to work both within
and against the academy can be fruitful. Thus, 1 argue that at its best
Gender, Place and Culture can be understood as an embodiment of
" p ar ad oxical spaces" in which feminist geography is practiced creatively
a n d p ro ductively. But 1 will also suggest that the journal's capacity to
op e ra re in this way is always fleeting, uncertain, and contestable. Through
82 LIZ BONDI
this particular focus 1 hope t o point to sorne more general features of

feminist academic practice including its methodology.
Gender, Place and Culture established an alternative to existing geog
raphy journals, offering instead a space dedicated specifically to feminist
perspectives. When the project was first mooted, my conversations with
colleagues rehearsed the pros and cons of such a strategy. Among the
dangers we considered was the risk that the j ournal would work against
the transformative challenge of feminism by reducing the flow to other
geography journals of manuscripts informed by feminist perspectives, and
by limiting feminist work to a ghetto that others would ignore. At the same
time, there was the possibility that the journal would consolidare the place
of feminist perspectives within the discipline, render feminist work more
visible within and beyond the discipline, and thereby enhance the scope for
feminism to challenge and transform geography.
In proceeding with the proj ect those of us involved felt that the potential
benefits outweighed the risks. 1 do not wish to evaluate this j udgment in
relation to subsequent events but instead 1 want to suggest that these
informal discussions drew on a particular way of looking at questions
about feminist academic practice, a framing characterized by a distinction
between establishing alternatives to an already existing "mainstream " and
transforming current practices from within the " mainstream. " This framing
was certainly familiar. Far example, an early debate about the development
of geography curricula inclusive of feminist perspectives distinguished
between the introduction of new courses concerned with the geographies
of women and of gender, and the revision of existing courses to incorporare
critica! awareness of women's lives and gender inequalities, classifying the
former as separate provision and the latter as integration (see for example
McDowell and Bowlby, 1 9 8 3 ; Monk, 1 9 8 5 ; Peake, 1 9 8 3 ) . We recognized
that each of these strategies has advantages and disadvantages. Separate
provision had the advantage of creating new kinds of opportunities for
interaction between teachers and students with feminist leanings, often in
classrooms consisting wholly or largely of women. But this approach had
the disadvantage of limiting the impact of feminist perspectives to a single
course and a self-selected group while the rest of the curriculum and the
rest of the student body was left unchanged and unchallenged. Conversely,
integration had the advantage of carrying the influence of feminist ideas to
a much wider audience and promised a radical transformation of the whole
of the curriculum. Against this, integration suffered the disadvantage of
leaving feminist teachers and students isolated from one another. The
approach also ran the risk of the radical potential of feminist ideas being
neutralized by routine references to " gender" as a ( largely unexamined )
social category without any attempt to address the conceptual challenges
associated with feminist perspectives ( see Bondi, 1 990a; Christopherson ,
1 9 8 9; and Johnson , 1 9 8 9 , for fuller elaboration of these processes ) . These

p ros and cons applied in similar ways to questions about a journal
de dicated to feminist geography: would the existence of an explicitly
fe mi nist geography journal encourage the development of innovative and
in flu ential feminist work within geography, or would it create a ghetto in
which feminist scholars spoke only to one another?
Such questions were, of course, unanswerable, and the decision to set up
rh e journal illustrates the point that feminists make choices about how to
do feminist geography without knowing what the effects will be. Since we
ca re a good deal about those effects it is hardly surprising that feminist
academic practice often feels uneasy. However, 1 want to suggest that the
unanswerability of such questions is also, paradoxically, conducive to the
cr eative and fruitful practice of feminist geography.
The strategies of making separate provision for feminist work and of
integrating feminist perspectives into the mainstream are not, in practice,
mutually exclusive oppositions. Thus, it is possible to offer specialist
courses and to include feminist perspectives within "core" courses within a
single program (compare Monk, 1 9 8 5 ) . Likewise most of those who
publish in Gender, Place and Culture also publish in j ournals that are not
explicitly or exclusively devoted to feminist perspectives. We might argue
therefore that the decision to set up Gender, Place and Culture did not and
does not restrict feminist geographers to one strategy at the expense of
another. This does not mean, of course, that the existence of the journal
makes no difference to the character of feminist geography or to its impact
on the discipline. Rather, since these strategies are not mutually exclusive,
feminist geographers can work with " both/and" possibilities rather than
" either/or" choices. From a " both/and" perspective, we can use the distinc
tion between separare provision and integration to clarify the differences
between different strategies without being forced into a direct conflict
between contradictory principies. And it suggests that many feminists are
interested in working both "within " the academy - by integrating feminist
ideas into " mainstream" outlets - and " against" the academy - by creating
sp aces which challenge the limits of, the " mainstream . "
S o our choices make a difference but are rarely i f ever unambiguous in
th eir effects. Working with an awareness of their ambiguous consequences,
for example by revisiting the pros and cons of different strategies, works
instead to encourage creative ways of both adhering to and contravening
ac ade mic conventions. This begins to illustrate what 1 mean by working
w it h in a paradoxical framing of the relationship between feminism and the
a ca de my. 1 would also suggest that the asking of unanswerable questions is
P ro du ctive. In this instance it heightened awareness of the impact of our
de cis io ns and in so doing it may have helped to ensure that, collectively,
fe mi nist geographers sustained both the strategy of separate provision and
84 LIZ BONDI
the strategy o f integration. One o f the broader issues to which this points
is that posing unanswerable questions may often be a useful methodological
strategy. This runs counter to influential conceptions of science which claim
that decisive testability is the hallmark of good research questions ( for the
classic statement see Popper, 1 95 9 ) . But if our aim is to influence the world
as well as to study it, questions that sustain critica) thinking in relation to
academic practices may turn out to be more effective.
Sorne decisions we made when we set up Gender, Place and Culture
were of an altogether " harder" variety ( and the phallic associations of the
adj ective are not irrelevant) in that they required us to choose between
mutually exclusive possibilities . For example, we had to set up a structure
within which to make editorial decisions. A key question we faced was
whether we should entrench feminist principies of collaborative working
by setting up an editorial collective or whether the journal should adopt
the " mainstream" practice of having one or two named editors together
with an editorial board. In choosing the latter we were well aware of the
pros and cons of both, for example the potential that collective working
would make for slower progress as against the risk of creating something
in which only a minority of feminist geographers consider themselves to be
involved. ( Contrast this decision with the collective approach adopted by
such journals as Feminist Review, Feminism and Psychology, and Fron
tiers . ) Severa) other decisions also led to the adoption of conventional
practices rather than alternatives, for example in setting up arrangements
for reviewing manuscripts, where we adopted a traditional double-blind
system (see Bondi, 1 99 8 ) .
l t might reasonably b e argued that the structures adopted by Gender,
Place and Culture conform very closely to " mainstream " academic practice:
beyond the subtitle of the journal there is little if anything to suggest any
significant departure from, or challenge to, the pre-existing norms of
refereed journals. Sorne might argue that this does not matter; ali that
matters is that the content of the journal fulfils its explicit commitment to
be a journal of feminist geography. But feminists have long insisted that
the means influence ends so that how people (authors, referees ) and
material ( written texts ) are treated in the production of the journal necess
arily affects the end result. Given the relatively small size and highly
interconnected nature of academic communities it is likely that the views
of prospective authors about how they are treated will be communicated
to potential authors and so influence the eventual content of the journal,
suggesting that the practices of the journal are of considerable significance.
So how should the adoption of conventional structures be understood ?
D i d w e compromise ( i n a neglectful sense) feminist principies i n pursu it
of academic acceptability ? There are sorne indications that we did. For
example, the j ournal has been criticized, informally if not in print, for
a dh ering to and reproducing conventional definitions of academic stan

da rds in which "clever" and often abstruse theorizing is valued more highly
th an other forms of writing. This, critics argue, s ustains familiar exclusion
ar y practices including a very narrow meaning of " i nternational, " which
largely excludes feminists from outside Western Anglo contexts and
especially those based in the so-called "Third World. " In addition, those
involved in the editing process are sometimes made painfully aware that
rhose we interact with - authors and referees - can be quite hostile to
attempts to deviate in any way from standard practices. And when the
founding editors began the process of finding replacements we became
more sharply aware of the way in which the reputation of the journal had
been attached to us as individual academics rather than being perceived as
belonging to a community.
There are also indications that we might have created something more
paradoxical, or, to use the definition offered above, something " absurd,"
in the form of a j ournal that embodies both highly conventional academic
practices, and, contradictorily, inescapably feminist practices. Far example,
while the manuscripts we received included many that took a form no
different from those submitted to " mainstream " journals, there has also
been a steady flow of material of a more experimental form, sorne of which
has made it through to print ( see far example Reichert, 1 994; H urren,
1 99 8 ; Okoko, 1 999, together with Robson, 1 999; Jarosz, 1 999; and Laurie
1 99 9 ) . Likewise, notwithstanding the rejection of sorne manuscripts, those
submitting papers have generally received a good <leal of encouragement
sometimes via the generous reports provided by referees and sometimes
from the editors themselves. This has led to the publication of a substantial
number of excellent arrides by postgraduate students and other " less
experienced" authors. More generally 1 would argue that it is in the
communications between editors, referees and authors that the journal has
made a small, uneven, but potentially significant contribution to modifying
academic practices. To claim that such shifts in practice create sufficient
self-contradiction to be viewed as paradoxical may verge on the grandiose,
but if feminism is vital to our practices as well as to our concepts then it is
in these unpublicized and apparently routine activities that its impact is
li kely to be felt. The connection with wider methodological concerns is
cl ear : feminist research practice requires that we attend carefully to the
rel atio nship between those positioned as " researchers " and those posi
ti on e d as " research subjects," " informants," " interviewees," and so on.
Ra rely , if ever, are the decisions we make clear cut, but unless we think
a b o ut these details we will undoubtedly reproduce dominant forms of
k no wledge production.
D ra wing on Gillian Rose's ( 1 993 ) discussion of the politics of paradox
ic al sp ace, Caroline Desbiens ( 1 999) has argued that efforts to reach
86 LIZ BONDI
" beyond " the limits o f geography may risk removing feminist challenges
from the discipline as it is known and practiced. Both Rose and Desbiens
offer tools for thinking and therefore producing knowledge in ways that
subvert from within. My contribution here complements such efforts by
focusing on sorne of the " nitty-gritty" activities that make up academic
practices. Processes of j ournal publication are an integral part of these
practices.
RESEARCH TIP
Fem i n ist Relati o n s h i ps
• Accept that relationships will not always be harmonious.

• Maintain awareness of complicity in relations of oppression .
• Dispense with expectations when assumptions surrounding rap
port dissolve.
• Remember that difference and sameness can be both challenging
and rewarding.
• Be sure to have fun !
5
Paradoxical Space: Geograph y, Men ,

and Duppy Feminism
David Butz and Lawrence D . Berg
In this chapter we attempt to trace sorne of the contours of the often

fraught - and certainly controversia! - relationship ( s ) between men and
feminist geography. In particular, we wish to examine sorne of the ways
that men who participare in feminism as feminist geographers are posi
tioned by contradictory and problematic discourses of masculinity, feminin
ity and academic knowledge production. We draw on poststructuralist
perspectives in order to deconstruct binary distinctions between male/
female (as ostensibly " natural " embodied positions within the sex/gender
system ) on the one hand, and masculinity and femininity (as socially
constructed subj ect positions for men and women) on the other. Like Judith
Butler ( 1 990), we claim that the distinction between sex and gender is a
social construction that produces the very effect it claims to describe. The
sharp distinction between sex and gender is a logical result of what Butler
calls a " regulatory fiction " that is naturalized through " performativity " -
a consistent repetition of behaviors that create an illusion of a natural and
" real " gender distinction. Therefore, rather then separating sex from
gender, we treat them as part of the same system of patriarchal and
he ter osexist domination.
We have developed the concept of " duppy feminism" as a key part of
our discussion of men and feminist geography. The phrase " duppy femi
nism " is adapted from the term " duppy, " which is used throughout the
C arib bean to describe a variety of sly and malevolent ghosts (Johnson-Hill,
1 9 95 ) . The notion of the duppy helps us to think about the malicious
g ho sts of masculinism in ways that resonate with our own experiences of
b ot h contesting and unwittingly reproducing masculinism and sexism
wi th in geography. We feel that the ideas of duppy feminism aptly describe
t h e po sition of male academic geographers who are at once committed to
t h e th eoretical, philosophical, and practica! tenets of various forms of
88 DAV I D B U TZ A N D L A W R E N C E D. B E R G
feminism informed by poststructuralist thought, yet who at the same time

often fall short in fulfilling these tenets in our own work and actions. In
developing the notion of the duppy feminist, we could be accused of
constructing yet another theoretical approach for meo to participate in
feminist geography - thereby (re)constituting a longstanding theory/empir
ics binary that articulates masculinism in geography ( see G. Rose, 1 993;
Berg, 1 9 94 ) . This is neither our intent nor, we hope, the way our discussion
of duppy feminism will be received by readers. Duppy feminism is, for us,
not so much a " theory " as an especially evocative metaphor to help us
think about our own problematic and contradictory participation in femi
nist geography.
This chapter, then, is our attempt to illustrate sorne of the contradictory
positioning( s ) of meo who work within feminist geography. We argue that
such paradoxical spaces ( from G. Rose, 1 993 ) are a necessary and produc
tive starting point for meo to participate in - and more importantly, to
support - feminist geography.
Men, Mascu l l n ity, and Fem l n lsm?
We begin our discussion of meo and feminist geography with two stories
that we think help to highlight the contradictory positions that people find
themselves in when attempting to effect a feminist subjectivity within
geography.
The first story begins at a recent conference where we both participated
in two special sessions in which the topic of discussion was feminist
qualitative research. These sessions brought to the surface, once again,
many of our insecurities about participating in feminism. For example, we
were both uncomfortably aware of our own male bodies intruding onto
the scene - immediately calling into question our credentials as feminist
commentators. Our insecurities as " feminists " led us both to take much of
our respective presentation times to position ourselves within the various
discourses of feminism. Interestingly, of the eight other participants in these
sessions, only one other person took the time to explicitly position herself
in relation to feminist geography - and she did so in order to make it clear
that she "was not a feminist. " While these quite minor events might be
read in many ways, we both took them to mean that there was an implicit
assumption among at least sorne of the other participants that their female
bodies signified an automatic link between themselves, their comments, and
feminist geography.
The various epistemic spaces in which the people participating in these
sessions found themselves suggest a geographically specific and culturally
contingent juncture in the production of feminist geographies. In this sense,
G E O G RA P H Y , M E N , A N O D U PPY F E M I N I S M 89
chey point to a particular epistemological understanding of feminist geog

raphy that draws on liberalism for its inspiration. Here, liberalism allows
us to theorize a direct and unproblematic link between female bodies and
feminist subjectivities. lnterestingly, few of the participants would consider
chemselves to be solely liberal feminists and this in itself illustrates the effect
of liberalism. In this situation and many others like it - even if we consider
ourselves to be socialists or poststructuralists - most of us cannot escape
ch e materiality of bodies nor their ( liberal ) theorization.
Liberalism, whilst an important component of contemporary Western
fe minisms, offers certain kinds of opportunities while posing other kinds of
constraints on the participation of men in the feminist " project . " There are
other approaches - especially poststructuralist-inflected feminisms - that
provide different and perhaps more productive opportunities for men and
others to work within the interstices, contradictions and paradoxical spaces
of everyday life.
This leads us to our second story, one that focuses on the difficulty that
we had in developing this essay and in so doing, traces out our own
contradictory positioning as pro-feminist men in geography. Our story
begins with our initial reticence at accepting the invitation to write a paper
about men and feminist geography. Neither of us felt ali that comfortable
about the prospect of writing this essay; nor were we comfortable about
how it might be received among our peers in the wider community of
feminist geographers. At the same time, we felt that the topic of the paper
- men and feminist geography - was too important to not include in a
collection of essays about feminist methodologies in geography. Our con
cerns about the project were not lessened when we eventually got up the
courage to ( partially ) confront our own contradictory participation in
feminist geography. Our first attempt at writing an essay about men
confronting masculinism in geography was, in sorne senses at least, a
complete failure. Indeed, instead of contesting masculinism, it could be
argued that we managed to (re)produce a very masculinist text. The
su bsequent revisions have not been wholly successful in expunging the
" ghosts " of masculinism from our text. On reflection, however, that may
not be such a bad thing for our readers, as sorne of the contradictions of
our text may help to illustrate in a tangible way the very contradictory and
paradoxical character of our own participation in feminist geography.
Both sets of events we describe above also point implicitly to what
Sa nd ra Harding ( 1 99 8 , p. 1 72 ) refers to as a " hesitancy" among female
(a nd o ther ) feminists to accept the work of heterosexual male feminists ( or
pro- fe minists ) at face value. Certainly, there are good reasons for such
he sita tion: "The deepest, most widespread, and most influential forms of
se xis m and androcentrism are neither overt nor intentional, but, rather,
i n st itu tional, social, and 'civilizational' " ( Harding, 1 99 8 , p. 1 73 ). In this
90 D AV I D B U TZ A N O LAW R E N C E D . B E R G
sense, sexism, masculinism, and patriarchy are so pervasive in the West,

that it is difficult even for feminist women geographers to identify and
theorize sorne of their more invidious aspects. In addition, men, who are
the (usually unknowing) benefactors of patriarchy and sexism, have a much
more difficult time identifying the sources of their own male privilege in
society.
Yet there are many reasons to reject the uncritical acceptance of a stance
that automatically questions the ability of men to participate in, and
contribute to, feminism. There have been many men who have helped us
understand the sexist character of Western societies. The list of su ch men
includes academics like John Stuart Mil! and Karl Marx or more recently
Harry Brod, Robert Connell and Michael Kaufman, or more popular
figures like Woody Guthrie and " political" leaders like W. E. B. DuBois. A
number of male academic geographers ( see for example Jackson, 1 99 1 ,
1 993; Sparke, 1 9 94, 1 99 6 ) have also contributed significantly to feminist
understandings of geography. Perhaps more importantly, however, a femi
nism that refuses to accept the possibility that men might be active
participants in the transformation of masculinity is both practically and
theoretically problematic.
In practica! terms, if we subscribe to a discourse that refuses the
possibility that men can change themselves then such a feminism is doomed
from the start, for we will be constructing a monolithic and immutable
masculinity that cannot be transformed by feminist praxis. In theoretical
terms, such a feminism fails to understand the way that socially constructed
hegemonic masculinities work to disempower women and subordinate
other men. As social constructions, masculinities are heavily influenced by
hegemonic cultural forms. These forms constitute the set of values that
define what it means to " be a man . " They tell men what is acceptable in
terms of dress, conduct, values, aspirations, body shape, tastes, and desires,
if they are to be seen as suitably " masculine " in social life. However, the
demands placed on individual men by these hegemonic cultural norms are
not uniform. In fact, in their articulation with different ( and sometimes
contradictory ) aspects of everyday life, they are more often than not
fractured and contradictory. The achievement of a unified masculine iden
tity is thus a virtual impossibility. Nonetheless, there does exist a hegemonic
masculinity that defines a narrow set of gendered possibilities for men who
wish to be seen as appropriately masculine ( Connell, 1 98 7, 1 995; Seidler,
1 99 1 ) . Very few men can meet the narrow demands of this hegemonic
masculinity - which offers up restrictions in terms of ability, age, class,
race, sexuality, education, etc. Moreover, there are many women who
occupy masculine subject positions ( think about how women have to a ct
" like men " in male-dominated industries or businesses j ust to survive ) .
I n both theoretical and practica! terms, i t i s important for men to
G E O G RA P H Y , M E N , A N D D U PPY F E M I N I S M 91
ch allenge the essentialist categories o f sex/gender that would otherwise

si le nce us from contesting masculinism, sexism and patriarchy. We are
in spired in this task by Gayatri Spivak who has a strategic response to the
p rocesses that serve to silence those who might otherwise contest sexism
and racism. Her approach is set out in the following quote from an
interview made more than a decade ago now:
I will have in an undergraduate class, let's say, a young, white male student,
politically correct, who will say: " I am only a bourgeois white male. I can't
speak . " In that situation - it's peculiar, beca use I am in the position of power
and their teacher and, on the other hand I am not a bourgeois white male - I
say to them, " why not develop a certain degree of rage against the history
that has written such an abject script for you that you are silenced ? " Then
you begin to investigate what it is that silences you, rather than take this very
determinist position - since my skin colour is this, since my sex is this, I
cannot speak. (Spivak, 19 90, p. 62)
The links between men and masculinity and women and femininity are
rhus neither automatic, nor essential. Instead, they are constituted in and
through the social relations of sex/gender systems, and they must be seen
as both relational (where identities are constituted in relation to other
identities ) and processual (where identity construction is a constant process
of change) . The following discussion, then, focuses on the hegemonic
construction of masculinity. Ir is important to remember that this hege
monic subject position is neither totalizing ( all-encompassing) nor mono
lithic ( unchallenged ) . Indeed, hegemony can never be absolute nor
uncontested, but is instead always partial and disputed. Further, as Gillian
Rose ( 1 9 9 3 ) argues, different men become masculine in different ways. Ir is
useful to keep the above in mind, then, as we outline duppy feminism, a
metaphorical way of thinking about and analyzing our contradictory and
paradoxical participation in feminist geography.
D u ppy Fem l n l s m
W e think w e want t o b e duppy feminists. Certainly we want t o b e feminists,

or ar least to conduct creditable feminist research. After ali, as Michael
Kimmel claims, " feminism provides both women and men with an extra
ordinarily powerful analytic prism through which to understand their lives,
and a political and moral imperative to transform the unequal conditions
of th ose relationships" ( 1 99 8 , pp. 60-1 ; emphasis in original ) . We also
agree with David Kahane ( 1 99 8 , p. 224 ) rhat " ar this historical moment,
feminist research comprises sorne of the most interesting, creative and
92 D AV I D B U TZ A N D LAW R E N C E D . B E R G
influential work " in the humanities and in the social sciences, including
geography. But as Kahane also indicates, the road to male feminism is
fraught with dangers, both for the personal and professional integrity of
would-be male feminists and - more importantly - for the larger feminist
project of developing structured analyses of patriarchy and practicing anti
patriarchal resistance and transformation. These dangers are partly about
knowing ( epistemology) and partly about doing ( stance/practice ) .
I n epistemological terms, how can men come to k now and fully under
stand structures of patriarchal oppression that have victimized mainly
women and benefited mainly men ? ( Or, to paraphrase Brian Pronger
( 1 99 8 ) , how can " bundles-of-desires-with-penises " experience " feminist
desire" ? ) In terms of practice, what sorts of stances can pro-feminist men
(who are always already embodied and socially positioned as male subjects )
develop vis-a-vis feminism in order to introduce their own analyses, and
perhaps their own subjectivities and experiences, into feminism without
also introducing material and discursive effects that are detrimental to pro
feminist struggle ?
In the essay "Male feminism as oxymoron , " David Kahane ( 1 99 8 )
describes four ideal-typical male feminist positions that d o not successfully
avoid these pitfalls of knowing and doing: the poseur, the insider, the
humanist, and the self-flagellator. Although we suspect these ideal-types
can be read in ways that imply an essentialist reading of men and male
ness, we feel if used cautiously and contingently, they provide useful
categories for thinking about how many men articulate with feminism.
Here we want to work from these types to describe sorne of the challenges
of researching as male feminist academics, or perhaps more pointedly, to
describe the range of epistemic violences available to pro-feminist male
researchers. We will then propose a fifth alternative - duppy feminism -
as a preferable, albeit an incomplete and partial way of imagining one's
(male) self in relation to pro-feminist struggle and the more specific task
of undertaking (male) feminist research. But first we have to take a detour
on the road to a feminist male feminism, into terrain not often associated
with feminism; a detour into the world of reggae, Rastafarianism, and
" duppy business . "
Rastafarians admonish one another to avoid " duppy business . " This
phrase can refer to a wide range of things, including Christian and revivalist
beliefs in the holy spirit and life after death; widespread Jamaican folk
preoccupations with evil spirits; and ali forms of this-worldly deceit and
duplicity - especially the neocolonial "politricks " employed against the
" sufferers " (as Rastafarians describe themselves and other poor Africans
living in Jamaica ) . Bob Marley and the Wailers draw upon the rich
discourse of the duppy throughout their oeuvre, but especially on Burnin '
( 1 973 ) , their second album with Island Records, and most particularly in
G E O G RA P H Y , M E N , A N D D U P P Y F E M I N I S M 93
rh e classic reggae anthem "Duppy Conqueror " ( see Dawes, 1 999; Johnson
Hill , 1 995 ) . The main words of the song's chorus - " l'm a duppy
co n queror, conqueror " - sung in dread, dirge-like cadence, sound initially
Jik e nothing more than a shallow rude boy boast/threat ( the term " rude
b oy " describes variously a category of underemployed, impoverished
Jamaican street youth, their characteristic personal style, and a type of
music that emerged in the mid- 1 960s to express their experiences ) . But the
Wailers are almost always subtler than that, and constantly aware of their
responsibilities as reggae's most visible social and political theorists. In that
context, these simple lyrics resolve quickly into a double play on words.
B ob Marley, lead singer of the Wailers, is simultaneously a duppy CON
Q UEROR and a D UPP Y conqueror.
Marley's claim to be a " conqueror " slips nicely into the category of rude
boy bravado (in one of the verses he sings " bars could not hold me; force
could not control me, now " ) . However, if we understand " duppy " as
describing the nature - rather than the object - of his conquering, we read
something else. He is occupying an ephemeral role; a conqueror, a fighter,
but in a ghostly, not quite visible, not quite tangible sense. He is a
conqueror in a guerilla non-war. Such a conception is entirely commensu
rate with the Wailers' sense of their mission as reggae musicians, and also
with a more general Rastafarian understanding of their resistance as being
simultaneously unrelenting, intangible, and often disguised; a resistance of
celebration, sufferation, remembrance, and selective non-participation
( what Scott, 1 990, calls everyday resistance and Foucault, 1 9 80, describes
as agonism; see also Thiele, 1 990; Laclau and Mouffe, 1 9 8 5 ) .
But " duppy" can also b e understood t o describe the object o f the
Wailers' conquering. They are fighting duppies, specifically the duppies of
a racist, colonialist past and present, the ghosts of slavery, hunger, political
repression, etc. that haunt contemporary Jamaica, and which provide the
themes far many Wailers' lyrics. In this sense " d uppy " is used as a subtle
and illuminating metaphor to characterize the ever-present, but often
ephemeral, slippery and duplicitous forms of oppression against which the
su fferers struggle.
The Wailers' deployment of the duppy discourse articulares a sophisti
cate d form of resistance and claiming. But it also expresses a certain respect
for the complexity of its obj ect, Babylon System ( one of the terms Rastafar
ia ns use as a catch-all far the range of discourses, institutions, agents, and
prac tic es of oppression operating against the sufferers ) as well as an
a wareness of the limits - the necessarily ghost-like quality - of resistance.
Bot h of these realizations relate to an awareness that the duppies against
wh ich the Wailers (and ali sufferers) are struggling operare within and not
i us t on the "conquerors. " The Wailers (especial/y the Wailers as wealthy
re ggae superstars ) are aware that they are constituted by and within the
94 D AV I D B U TZ A N D LAW R E N C E D . B E R G
field of domination they are resisting; they are engaged in a struggle against
Babylon System and for personal integrity.
For now, !et us say that both spins on "duppy conqueror" provide
lessons for pro-feminist men. First, perhaps a useful way to approach our
own search for feminist knowledge (an epistemological issue) is as D UPP Y
feminists: always starting from the realization that we are fighting a duppy
- patriarchy, male privilege - that is within us. This duppy helps constitute
our subj ectivities in duplicitous, often intangible but ever-present ways, and
it commands us to find ways to use the inevitability of ambivalence and
contradiction productively. That could be our standpoint. Second, maybe
a useful way to approach doing { stance/practice) feminism, and feminist
research is as duppy FEMINISTS: always there, unrelenting, insinuated
into the discourses and institutions of patriarchy. But, as duppy FEMI
NISTS we are also ephemeral, in the background (e.g. in the acknowledge
ments rather than the references, or learning to work towards less authority
rather than more ) and strategically duplicitous towards the institutions of
patriarchy (and not towards our feminist colleagues, as, for example, when
they get jobs they are qualified for, but which we had assumed should be
ours because of male privilege ) .
We realize that b y constructing our discussion around the metaphor of
duppy feminism we risk committing an act of cultural appropriation. This
may not seem to be a promising foundation for an essay concerned with
the problem of reducing the impact of certain types of structured privileges.
However, the Wailers' use of the duppy metaphor is autoethnographic:
that is, it is a deliberate effort by members of a subordinate group to
express their reality in a language and idiom that members of a dominant
group will understand, and that they will be able to relate to their own
reality in sorne way (M. L. Pratt, 1 992 ) . We try to use " d uppy conquering"
in that spirit, as a sanctioned and respectful ethnographic appropriation -
an evocation from and of a certain experience of marginality and ambiva
lence - which can help guide pro-feminist men through ( but not out of)
their own ambivalence and into a productive paradoxical space: a place
from which to practice. Indeed, we think of our appropriation of the duppy
metaphor (and its situation in Rastafarianism and reggae music) as a sort
of {parallel ) parable for what we mean by duppy feminism itself. We will
return to - and further develop - this duppy/feminist analogy after a brief
contextual discussion of Kahane's ideal types of the unsuccessful male
feminist.
Kahane begins with a point similar to one we j ust made: " men have to
face the extent to which fighting patriarchy means fighting themselves "
( 1 99 8 , p. 2 1 3 ) . He engages with Sandra Harding's work on standpoint
epistemology to accept cautiously that it is possible for men to develop
productive and transformative feminist knowledge ( see Harding, 1 99 8 ) . He
is , however, more skeptical than Harding of the probability of such a

de velopment, which necessarily involves men in ongoing processes of
in terna! struggle, often entangling them in convoluted self-rationalizations
a nd " various forms of bad faith and self deception " ( 1 99 8 , p. 2 1 3 ) . This is
n ot an indictment of men, merely Kahane's insistence that it is difficult for
us consistently and continuously to concede fully to the fact of male
privilege in our own lives (and theories ) . It is even more difficult to work
sy stematically against our own patriarchal interests (whatever we may say
ab out patriarchy oppressing men and women alike) in attempting to
dismantle structures and practices of male privilege. For example, it is one
thing to acknowledge the reality of male privilege, quite another to attribute
our own academic success as much to this privilege as to neutral merit, and
an other thing still to actively work to undermine the unfair advantage male
privilege has given us. Even the most rigorously trained pro-feminist men
among us may find the third ( or second) stage in this scenario a bit much
to expect: and there begins the process of " bad faith and self-deception . "
Kahane observes that " bad faith and self-deception" are often most
visible ( among pro-feminist male academics, at least) in the space between
theory and practice. Although we are suspicious of too strong a distinction
between them ( for example, is teaching feminist theory an example of
practice or theory ? ) , we take Kahane's point that " men have a lot to gain
( and not much to lose ) by dabbling in feminist theory, whereas they have
little practically to gain from feminist practice, especially when this practice
directly challenges patriarchal structures and behaviours" ( 1 99 8 , p. 224 ) .
This statement - and w e think w e can accept its general veracity - has
interesting implications for men's attempts to do feminist social science
research, because of the theoretical and practica! ( thinking and doing)
nature of social science research procedures. Thinking our research with
feminist thoughts without doing our research in anti-patriarchal deeds is -
in part at least - an instance of bad-faith and a betrayal of the sort of
guerilla/duppy feminism hinted at above. (At the same time, however, it is
i mportant to remember the pervasive character of masculinism and the
difficulty that both men and women have in identifying it and contesting
it. ) In developing his ideal types of unsatisfactory male feminism Kahane is
most concerned with the state of being a male feminist, but his types also
allow us to interrogare sorne of the theory/practice pitfalls of doing feminist
research as pro-feminist men. It is worth noting that these are ideal types,
more useful for identifying tendencies than for definitively categorizing
in div idual pro-feminist men, most of whom (ourselves included ) exhibir
ch ara cteristics of each of the types at different times and in different
circu m stances. Moreover, the " bad faith and self-deception " that Kahane
s pea ks of is not necessarily a tactic employed by fully self-aware agents.
R athe r, because of the fractured and contradictory character of human
96 D AV I D B U TZ A N D L AW R E N C E D. B E R G
subjectivity, many of these practices will be undertaken by agents acting

through unconscious fantasies and desires.
The theory/practice divide noted above is most evident in what Kahane
describes as the poseur. Here is an in dividual who is interested in feminist
theory, has engaged in a pick-and-choose reading of it, and has used bits
of feminist theory to serve his non-feminist proj ects. He has not, however,
" turned feminist critiques upan his own theoretical and practica! tendencies
- to have extended his feminist analysis from a concern with structures to
a consideration of how these structures have informed his own identity in
ways that correlate with patriarchal harms" ( Kahane, 1 99 8 , p. 224 ) . This
somewhat de-personalized commitment to feminism as purely propositional
knowledge is attractive and comfortable for a couple of reasons. First, it
allows men to feel good about their sense of community and allegiance
with the "women's movement, " without delving deep enough to feel bad
about their own involvement in patriarchal oppression. Second, adopting
the stance of poseur puts men in comfortable and self-affirming company,
as many putatively feminist female academics also frequently occupy this
position.
What kind of feminist research can we expect to emerge from the stance
of poseur? This stance quite likely will lead to analyses of research findings
that are informed by aspects of feminist theory. But it is unlikely that the
processes of defining a research problem, developing methodologies, select
ing and relating to participants and co-researchers, or collecting data will
be much influenced by a will to practice anti-patriarchal resistance and
transformation . This type of research can be useful for advertising the
analytical power and flexibility of feminist theory (and the male feminist
theorist), but <loes little towards feminist social transformation ( or the
development of feminist desire in the researcher ) . Indeed, this research
scenario can be understood as a technology/resource of male privilege, as it
transports male researchers into the lofty ( and arguably prestigious) realms
of feminist theorizing, while leaving the mundane task of transforming the
research process according to pro-feminist principies up to women. In other
words, this is feminist practice deferred by theory. The stance of poseur, in
its success at deflecting feminist analysis away from the self, allows the
mal e feminist to feel good about himself, while protecting him from the
anguish of glimpsing his complicity in patriarchal oppression. A lot hangs
on the balance of this delicate trick of deflection : turning to feminism to
feel better about ourselves leaves us vulnerable to the eventual realization
that " feminist analyses don't tend to cast men in a particularly flattering
light" ( Kahane, 1 99 8 , p. 225 ) .
The insider resolves the paradox that the poseur i s left with by combin
ing his theoretical interest with a degree of political commitment to
feminism: volunteer work, reading, pedagogy, and conversation . In this
G E O G R A P H Y , M E N , A N D D U P PY F E M I N I S M 97
ideal type, these outward demonstrations of faith (which may be quite

sincere ) are not accompanied by sustained self-reflection. " The insider
premises his comfortable self-image on doing well in the eyes of feminist
women, even while his comfort militates against his addressing his own
s e xist tendencies " ( Kahane, 1 99 8 , p. 225; emphasis added ) . Failure to turn
c rit iques of patriarchy on himself, however, prevents the insider from
re cognizing the extent to which the appearance of " doing well in the eyes
of feminist women " is itself premised on his secure position within a system
of patriarchal privilege. He is unlikely to realize that he may be being
humored by women because of his gendered power, his institutional
influence or authority, his refreshing difference from non-feminist men, or
merely because he so obviously expects to be appreciated. To employ
Harding's ( 1 99 8 ) distinction, he has developed a feminist perspective, but
not a male feminist standpoint. The insider fails to recognize himself as an
agent of patriarchy.
We can imagine that this failure would be key to the insider's approach
to research. Certainly, his analysis will be guided by feminist theory. And,
indeed, the processes of defining a research problem, selecting participants
and co-researchers, and collecting data may be influenced by feminist
principies . But the research process is unlikely to be characterized by any
sustained effort to relate to participants and co-researchers in anti-patriar
chal ways, or to employ methodologies for producing knowledge that
relinquish cognitive authority to the women involved in the research. The
insider remains the privileged male captain of a feminist ship. The research
that results may contribute creditably to a body of feminist academic
knowledge ( developing structured analyses of patriarchy) , but again, will
do little practically to help dismantle male privilege. Indeed, the insider
uses his feminism to appropriate and expand credit, power and credibility
- arguably a way of increasing rather than dismantling his own male
privilege, while avoiding the contradictions inherent in his position.
Many men read feminist theory deeply enough - or are sufficiently
aware of their social surroundings - to get glimpses of certain patriarchal
aspects of their own identities and social positioning. This can be an
i mportant step towards developing a male feminist standpoint, although
positive results are not guaranteed. The humanist has experienced glimpses
- perhaps full panoramic views - of his imbrication in patriarchy, and
d eals with the accompanying anguish and existential discomfort by concen
tr ati ng less on the ways he has benefited from patriarchy than on his
ex perie nce of its constraints. The humanist is interested in the various ways
th at p atriarchy hurts men as well as women (e.g. by constructing men as
co mpetitive, casting them perpetually in the provider role, stunting their
e m o tio nal development, or alienating them from their children ) . Such a
preoc cupation often involves a deep and sustained engagement with femi-
98 D AV I D B U TZ A N O LAW R E N C E D . B E R G
nist theories of patriarchy, and a sincere attempt to become a different kind

of man, " more in touch with feminine qualities and less constrained by
patriarchal social structures " ( Kahane, 1 99 8 , p. 227 ) . While this is a
worthwhile endeavor that may, in certain circumstances, improve the lives
of sorne women, its primary concern is with the well-being of men .
Feminists note that this is not a new preoccupation for men, nor a
particularly efficient way to develop better understandings of the ways
patriarchy systematically benefits men and harms women .
What sort of research can we expect to emerge from a humanist stance ?
Again, feminist theory - or the influence of feminist theory - will be
prominent, and participatory/conversational methods often associated with
feminist research are likely to be employed. But, given a primary interest in
men 's experiences of patriarchy, neither the selection of participants and
co-researchers, nor the research methodology (which is likely epistemologi
cally to privilege expressions of male knowledge and interpretation ) , are
likely to do much to increase women's power and cognitive authority in
the research process, nor introduce practices that decrease the effects of
male privilege on women 's lives. This is not necessarily the case ( for
example, it may be fruitful to deploy a foil range of feminist research
principies to the task of asking female participants to discuss the effects of
patriarchal norms on their male partners' emotional development ) . But for
the most part, humanist male feminist research will involve men using
selected feminist theory to talk about themselves (again ) . This is unlikely to
have a transformative influence on women's lives. Additionally, the discur
sive effects of men talking about their own beleaguered subjectivities from
within feminism (whatever it is they say) might be detrimental for pro
feminist struggle.
Kahane's fourth ideal type is the self-flagellator. Men, when they adopt
this stance, accept feminist analyses of patriarchy and male privilege, and
recognize their own imbrication and complicity in these processes. Not a
bad start, except that the self-flagellator deals with this recognition by
focusing disproportionately on his own crisis of guilt and absolution. His
objective becomes purging himself of sexism, and thus finally living up to
" the feminist challenge " ( Kahane, 1 99 8 , p. 227) . There are two main
problems with this stance. First, it is intolerant of - or perhaps blind to -
the ambiguity, contradiction, and ambivalence that necessarily constitu te
male feminist endeavors. Even as men strive to constitute ourselves as part
of the " solution " to patriarchy, we must realize that our socialization as
men in a patriarchal society continues to constitute us as part of the
problem. Failure to accept this contradiction - this structured failure -
encourages frustration, self-deception, and perhaps eventually a " retrea t to
the stances of humanist or insider, or from feminism altogether " (Kahane,
1 99 8 , p. 22 7 ) . Second, the will to meet "the feminist challenge " can itself
rn a nifest a perverse sort of competitive masculinism, a desire to regain

co n trol of the hall, a sort of petulant retort to feminist criticism .
The stance of self-flagellator does suggest certain avenues for research.
Fe rninist theory will be prominent, as will conversational/interactional
rn e thods (especially biography, life history, and autobiography) commonly
a sso ciated with feminism. However, to the extent that research is likely to
fo cus on men's struggles to overcome their own imbrication in patriarchy,
rh e research process will itself do little to resist male privilege or transform
women's lives. lts practical/processual effects are likely to be similar to
humanist male feminist research, although it may be more effective in
stimulating self-reflexivity and articulating strategies men have used to
de velop themselves as less patriarchal subj ects.
We can discern a number of irregular regularities among the research
i rn plications we have sketched for these four stances. First, ali encourage
the use of feminist theory, although to varying degrees. Second, while they
differ in the extent to which feminist considerations are likely to influence
selection of topic, methods, co-investigators, and participants, none of
them require - or even really encourage - that the male researcher relin
quish cognitive authority or male privilege in the course of the research
process. Third, none of the four stances advocates research on tapies that
are likely to be particularly relevant to women's struggles to overcome
patriarchal oppression, and two of them actively militate against the use of
female research participants (except through the use of considerable
imagination in designing the research ) . In short, each of these male feminist
stances seems to encourage the use and further development of feminist
theory by men, but not the relinquishing of male power, privilege, and
cognitive authority in the day-to-day practice of putatively feminist
research. lt is worth noting that this is not j ust an indication of the personal
venality of the various sub-species of male feminist, but also a manifestation
of the operation of deep masculinism in institutional academic culture. We
thrive in the university - sometimes women and almost always men
( because of male privilege ) , sometimes feminists and almost always non
fe min ists ( beca use of the anti-feminism and male privilege of the academy)
- by appropriating theory and protecting personal power, control, and
aut ho rship. Pronger describes this deep masculinism (and this masculine
de sire ) in terms of the territorialization of space; the will to penetrate
ot he rs' space and protect our own:
This is the particular masculine desire for the territorialisation of space: it is

the desire to conquer and protectively endose space, the desire to make
connections according to the laws of spatial domination. Here the capacity
to exist is circumscribed by the will to control space and the fear of the
violability of the same. lt is a fetishised neurotic form of desire that appreci-
1 00 D AV I D B U TZ A N D L A W R E N C E D . B E R G
ates its own existence in so far as it is in control of its space. Loss of control
of space is the death of masculinity. (Pronger, 199 8 , p. 72 )
Each of the stances described by Kahane exhibits strong traces of this

territorial will to expand our territory. In this sense, feminist theory is used
to penetrate the terrain of feminism; but the gates to our own territory, the
boundaries for accessing the terrain of male privilege ( not as an interna!
struggle, but as a social practice ) remain tightly closed. How can men learn
to treat our feminist research endeavors as something other than expansion
ary expeditions ?
Toward Practlcing D uppy Fem i n i s m
Maybe w e c a n imagine t h e metaphor of duppy conquering as providing a

preferable alternative to the metaphor of territorial conquering employed
by Pronger to describe masculine desire. Maybe the exercise of imagining
ourselves as duppy feminists can help us develop a less expansionary
involvement in feminist research.
The first step is to recognize the duppy-character of patriarchy. Duppies,
like other ghostly phenomena, find their homes in the uncertain spaces
between consciousness, social relations, and material social practices. In
societies with a strong duppy-sensibility, duppies are ever present, some
times with tangible and material effects, but always as a threatening
potential, a possibility waiting for an opportunity, a constant gnawing
constituent of subjectivity, but not fully under the control of the subject.
Marley's claim "I am a duppy conqueror " articulates a decision to reject
the duppy of Babylon System, but in the interpretation we offered above, it
also implies a recognition that this duppy is a part of him, but not fully
part of his self-consciousness . Similarly, men's commitment to feminism
must include the recognition that we cannot hope to be fully conscious of
the ghosts of our own masculinity or those of patriarchy in general. We
must learn to work productively with the knowledge that these ghosts are
part of us, manifest in our (sub)consciousness, social relations, and material
social practices; and that they must be engaged at each of these sites
simultaneously, and without hope of definitive outcome. To a large extent
this must be a recognition of the inherent contradictions of our position:
struggling against male privilege from a position of male privilege that we
cannot abdicate fully. Thus arises the paradoxical question: how can we
use male privilege against itself in our research endeavors ?
The second step may be to learn something from duppy tactics, as the
Wailers suggest that Rastafarians have done. If Kahane's ideal types are
any indication, there are strong temptations for male feminists to gather
G E O G R A P H Y , M E N , A N D D U PPY F E M I N I S M 1 01
main ly, if somewhat unreliably, around the most visible, remunerative,

res pectable and institutionalized area of feminist scholarship: feminist
theory. This has worked well for male feminists, but has not contributed
significantly to dismantling male privilege, or to the proj ect of using male
p rivilege against itself. Duppy tactics would suggest something closer to a
continuous vigilant opportunism; a preference for peripheral sites of inter
vention, away from the centers of socially and institutionally sanctioned
ac tivity; an attentiveness to micro-practices that run against the grain of
patriarchal structures of merit, credit, and authorship; a willingness to
exploit the inconsistencies, ruptures, neuroses, and contradictions of the
patriarchal discourses that constitute us. This is a guerilla feminism for the
academy. In practica! research terms, it may mean relying less on develop
ing theoretical credentials to j ustify our work as feminist, and concentrating
more on exploiting the innumerable specific and contingent, and only
partly predictable, opportunities to relinquish masculine territory - to
spend male privilege. Spending such male privilege should take place in the
definition of problems, the selection of co-researchers, participants and
sites, the development of research relationships and data gathering pro
cedures, the ways questions are asked, the ways analyses develop - the
entire range of research practices. In even more practica! terms, at each of
these stages of research, it may reside often simply in the decision to listen
rather than speak, to be impressed rather than impress, to give credit rather
than claim it.
The third step is to choose these practica! tactical maneuvers with a
sensitivity about their (metaphorical ) territorial implications. Male privilege
is a territory. Patriarchy describes ( among other things ) the resources and
technologies for expanding and protecting that territory. Pro-feminist men
cannot desert that territory; we cannot abdicate male privilege. But perhaps
we can find openings, routes into the terrain of male privilege, and
opportunities for forays beyond its borders. Perhaps this greater boundary
porosity will help dilute male privilege, allow the wider distribution of a
less "potent" formula. Without suggesting for a moment that pro-feminist
men should lessen their engagement with feminist theory, we nevertheless
doubt that purely theoretical endeavors will pry open those gaps in the
boundaries of male privilege. Pro-feminist male researchers would do well
to seek these openings - these opportunities for dilution - along the
meandering route we forge through the social relations and material social
practices of the research process. That, we think, might be duppy feminism.
1 02 D AV I D B U TZ A N D L AW R E N C E D . B E R G
A C K N OW L E D G E M E NTS
Authorship is listed according to the alphabetical order of our first names in order
to highlight the "intimacy" of co-authorship, as well as to de-emphasize the
masculine cultural ritual of lineage by which men's last names denote ownership.
David would like to thank Kathryn Besio, Nancy Cook, Tania Dolphin, and Pamela
Moss for their tolerance of his individual acts of bad faith and self-deception, and
also Paul Berkowitz for suggesting the term "duppy feminist. " Lawrence would like
to thank many feminist colleagues - but especially Robyn Longhurst, Wanda Ollis,
Karen Morin, Pamela Moss, and Kathleen Gabelmann - who have helped him
learn about feminist theory and practices, ali the while recognizing and accepting
the contradictory spaces of feminism that he inhabits so uneasily. Although he is
not always gracious about it, Lawrence is nevertheless quite grateful when his
colleagues refuse to accept his acts of bad faith. We are both grateful to Pamela
Moss for her constructive cornrnents on earlier drafts of this essay.
R E S E A R C H TIP
Col laborati ve P roj ects
• A collaborative project will benefit from a clear delineation of

group goals, expectations, and individu al responsibilities from the
outset. You may wish to draw up a formal agreement or ' contract'
that outlines the tasks set for each member, making sure to
establish deadlines.
• Set u p a regular schedule for grou p meetings, including meetings
with a supervisory member if appropriate.
• Work with each member's strengths, giving credit for a diverse
range of contributions.
• Acknowledge tension and identify outlets for dealing with frus
tration and identify strategies for assisting the group process.
• Ensure that the size and scope of your project is manageable;
group projects generally take longer than anticipated.
• Allow plenty of time for analysis, editing, and proofreading.
6
Toward a More Fully Reflexive

Feminist Geograph y
Karen Falconer Al-Hindi and

Hope Kawabata
Feminist researchers collecting the life stories of Maori women engage in

whakawhanaungatanga, a Maori concept which refers to the process of
building family, or kinship ( Napia et al . , 1 99 9 ) . As an offering of good
will, trust, and reciprocity, the researchers tell their own life stories to the
women whose stories they wish to hear. Whakawhanaungatanga helps to
bridge the difference between the researchers and the participants, and
establishes a permanent bond between them. Offering their own stories as
gifts prior to receiving the gift of another's story places the researchers on
a par with the participant. Such an approach to interviews would be both
impractical and culturally inappropriate in most of the English-speaking
academy. Yet, we can apply the ideas of shared vulnerability and compar
able positioning for researchers and participants, and this is one of the
goals of the approach that we advance in this chapter.
As Kobayashi states, " difference - or its putative opposite, sameness - is
an inevitable ontological condition that is never completely achieved"
( 1 997, p. 3 ) . Feminism grew out of a concern with difference, and geogra
phers who recognized that women are often viewed as different from men
(and not only as different but as inferior) felt the need for a specifically
feminist geography. Learning about difference and presenting this knowl
ed ge in a meaningful form is part of social science research ; at the same
ti m e, interpersonal difference permeates the research process. For example,
this chapter grew out of a collaboration between Hope and Karen that
began with Hope's MA thesis; the illustration later in the chapter comes
directly from Hope's research. As Hope designed and conducted her study,
and later wrote about it, she grappled with issues that arose from differ
e nces between herself and her research participants. Hope and Karen
( Ho pe's thesis supervisor ) also experienced differences between them over
t h e co urse of Hope's research and during the writing of this chapter.
1 04 K A R E N F A L C O N E R A L - H I N D I A N D H O P E KAWAB ATA
Beca use this chapter concerns difference and research methodology, we

want to expose rather than conceal our individuality and disagreements .
An earlier draft used the "we" commonly found in co-authored texts, but
Hope obj ected on the grounds that Karen had developed the arguments
well beyond those Hope made in her thesis. Karen and Hope agreed that
the chapter should be written in the first person singular, but that person is
Karen in all sections but the fourth, in which that person is Hope.
That we are concerned about such issues and can articulare our compro
mises reflects a contemporary, ongoing, transformation of social science.
Ruth Behar, for example, writes about the search for new ways of
researching and writing anthropology that will connect the scholar and the
researched and which emphasize the humanity and frailty of each ( Behar,
1 996, p. 5 ) . Feminism's commitment to understanding the world in order
to change ir (Acker et al., 1 99 3 ) requires that feminists work toward a
methodological strategy that helps scholars as well as others to understand
rather than obscure difference, values participants' knowledge as well as
the researcher's, and shares power rather than reinforcing hierarchy.
Reflexivity has been identified in the literature as one of the ingredients of
this revolution. In this chapter we argue for a more " full " version of
reflexivity that can make a strong contribution to the transformation that
is ar hand. Feminist geographers are ideally placed to take up the promise
of a fuller reflexivity and to employ ir in their own transformative work.
As understood in everyday language and typically used in academic
discourse as well, reflexivity means reflectivity, or the act of reflecting upon
oneself and one's experiences ( see for example England, 1 994 ). To
researchers, this usually means "giving as full and honest an account of the
research process as possible, in particular explicating the position of the
researcher in relation to the researched" ( Reay, 1 996, p. 44 3 ) . Many
feminist geographers struggle with such an idea of reflexivity. In this
chapter I "push " the concept, and argue that a more fully reflexive research
practice can be useful. Because I conduct research using a semi-structured,
in-depth interviewing method of data collection, I use interviews within a
feminist geography research framework as example. I wish to make the
argument, however, that the fuller reflexivity I advocate may be broadl y
applied.
Following this introduction, the chapter continues with a stage-setting
overview of feminist research and research methods. That section concludes
with a discussion of reflexivity in feminist geography research as it is
conventionally practiced. The next section offers an argument and model
for an extended reflexivity. Then, Hope provides an illustration of such an
approach in practice. Finally, I link the argument to others' calls for
methods that de-center the researcher and that encourage her to relinquish
- sorne! - control over the research process.
R E F L E X I V E F E M I N I S T G E O G RA P H Y 1 05
Toward Reflexlve Fem l n l st Research
Feminist social science research is explicitly political. lt is distinguished

from mainstream social science, and from other alternative approaches, by
its concern to revea) and, often, to redress gender inequality. Consistent
with this agenda, feminists seek to empower individuals and groups that
have historically lacked access to power; this includes women, of course,
but also racial and ethnic minorities, working-class men and women, those
with physical disabilities, and others whose difference from a white, male,
middle-class, able-bodied and heterosexual model of normality have disad
vantaged them. Middle-class, white academic feminists are aware, spurred
in part by a trenchant critique launched by women of color ( see for
example Lorde, 1 9 84; Spivak, 1 9 8 8 ; hooks, 1 992 ) , that they enj oy a
privileged position. Many seek to redress this through their research
practices. But how can such scholarship be unbiased and valid, given its
avowedly political stance ?
Ali social scientists, feminist and otherwise, place a premium on valid
research. Validity refers to the trueness of an account or measure: "we
want to know that our research results fairly and accurately reflect the
aspects of social life that we claim they represent" ( Acker et al., 1 99 3 ,
p. 145; see also Bailey e t al., 1 99 9 ) . Bias is a threat t o t h e validity of a
study and may enter the research during data collection, data analysis, or
interpretation. Guards against bias are part of every methodological strat
egy. In the case of semi-structured interviews, for instance, a participant
may speak at length to answer a question, and the researcher usually
analyzes such an answer in its entirety and reproduces it whole in written
accounts. Close attention to a detailed answer from a participant is one
guard against a poorly worded question, an unfair analysis, or a skewed
interpretation. A valid research-based claim, therefore, is unbiased, and
may be described as " obj ective. "
To many feminist scholars, a political approach to research stands a
better chance of producing valid results than an approach, such as positiv
ism, that claims to ignore power relations. Sandra Harding, an advocate of
feminist standpoint theory, and Donna Haraway, whose explication of
situated knowledge has become well-known among geographers, have
articulated such approaches. According to standpoint theory, certain
g roups of knowers are better positioned, because of their disadvantaged
social situation, to analyze the processes through which they are disadvan
ta ged. Standpoint theorists advocate " studying up" by looking up through,
for instance, the " glass ceiling" on women's advancement in corporations
i n orde r to understand this barrier with greater clarity than is possible if
o ne " studies clown, " from the point of view of those who benefit from
1 06 KA R E N F A L C O N E R A L - H I N D I A N D H O P E KAWAB ATA
sexism. Rath er than a static position such as that suggested by the notion
of a standpoint, the idea of situated knowledge views individuals as
multiply positioned within different frameworks of power, race, class and
gender, and calls for knowers to take responsibility for what they claim to
know with respect to their positions. Such understandings of where knowl
edge comes from inform the ways feminist researchers approach different
methods of research.
Increasing openness to qualitative research methods combined with
growing skepticism toward standardized data collection tools (and the
quantitative analyses these facilitate ) mean that interviews, especially semi
structured and open-ended ones, are gaining in popularity throughout the
social sciences. The important difference between this approach and the
more traditional, structured interview is that the path of the conversation
between researcher and participant is not predetermined, nor is the spon
taneity inherent in the flow of conversation truncated. Despite its popular
ity and increasingly sophisticated use, a problem continues to bedevil the
open-ended interview - expressed as " difference between interviewer and
interviewee " ( see for example Reay, 1 996; Song and Parker, 1 99 5 ) ; people
wish to learn from and about others because the latter are different from
the former, but the fact of difference itself may distance them from one
another, making such understanding difficult.
Mainstream social science research has always had difficulty with dissim
ilarities between interviewers or researchers and research participants or
interviewees. Specifically, differences between researchers and participants
in age, life stage, race and ethnicity, class, gender, ( dis)ability, and so on,
are believed to create barriers to rapport during the interview, in which the
interviewee (or, more often, " informant" ) , is the source of valuable data to
be disclosed to the interviewer ( see figure 6 . l ( a ) ) . Many mainstream
interviewers try to minimize the influence of the interviewer on the partici
pant: the interviewer is a " neutral medium through which questions and
answers are transmitted" ( Babbie, 1 973 , p. 1 72; emphasis in original ) .
Many feminist researchers a s well a s others, o f course, have disavowed this
purportedly neutral stance. Instead, the interviewer ( more often, the
researcher ) is certainly an instrument of research but is anything but a
neutral one ( England, 1 994 ) . Both power and difference, or rather identi
ties, are at play in the field of relations in which researcher and participant
are located.
Against the mainstream approach to interviews, the feminist researcher
engages her participants in open-ended, semi-structured, interactive inter
views or conversations in which the nature of the interaction itself produce s
new information or insight about a tapie ( see figure 6 . l ( b ) ) . Initially, man y
feminists assumed that because women interviewed women, they had so
much in common as women ( the experiences of childbirth, mothering, and
F i g u re 6.1 Models of fe m i n ist refl exivities
(a) The ideal of positivist objectivity (b) F e m i n ist i nterview
(e) Overco m i n g d i ffere n ce? (d) Transparent reflexivity

(after England 1 994 and Rose 1 997)
e research
o research partici pant
---i)li� scruti ny and reflection
(e) The more fu l l y reflexive i nterview � mean i n gfu l , thoughtful

com m u n ication
sexism, for example ) that other differences were unimportant. White

feminists in particular were shaken out of this essentialist position by
African-American and other minority scholars and activists who argued
that gender was not the only dissimilarity that mattered, either in life or
res earch (see for example hooks, 1 990 ) . A more nuanced appreciation of
v ariety among women is one outcome of the feminist postmodern and
poststructuralist critique of positivism. Many researchers, however, con-
1 08 KA R E N F A L C O N E R A L - H I N D I A N D H O P E KAWABATA
tinue to be frustrated by research methods which are relatively clumsy by

comparison to the sophistication of feminist epistemology.
Feminist interviewers employ various strategies as they seek to establish
commonality across difference with their participants. Gibson-Graham
( 1 994 ) , for example, asked her research associates to interview their friends
in arder to take advantage of their pre-existing trust, while Oberhauser
( 1 997) took her children with her to interviews so as to build rapport with
her Appalachian homeworker participants through their shared interests as
mothers ( see figure 6 . 1 (c) ). By incorporating their roles as friends and/or
mothers into the interview process, these researchers make themselves
vulnerable to their participants in parallel to the exposure of the partici
pants' lives in the interview. This helps to "level the field " between
researcher and researched and so disrupts the traditional hierarchy which
places the researcher "above" her participant. lt also introduces the heter
ogeneity of the researcher's life into the data-collection situation, so that
she becomes multi-dimensional in the same way that many feminists want
to represent the lives of their research participants: complicated, compro
mise-ridden, and sometimes contradictory.
Gillian Rose ( 1 997) identifies the researcher as the " knowing analyst "
of the researcher-participant landscape, and criticizes feminist geographers'
conceptualization of difference-as-distance for reproducing the ostensibly
all-knowing, objective vision of the positivist scientist. But Rose's criticism
is not entirely fair. That is, while the " landscape of power" of feminist
research may appear to replicare the positivists' claim to all-knowing
objectivity, the two approaches are in fact quite different (compare figures
6 . l (a ) and ( b ) ) . Of principal interest is the fact that traditional interviews,
consistent with a positivist epistemology, require that the respondent be
reflexive about her/himself and share her/his insights with the interviewer.
Most interviews conducted within a feminist research agenda also require
this participant reflexivity, but - and here is the important difference -
require in addition that the researcher reflect back to the participant the
researcher's understanding of the participant's thoughts. One benefit of this
practice is that it affords the participant an opportunity to correct any
misunderstanding between them. Further, this approach encourages self
reflexivity by the researcher, although insights gained thereby are not
usually shared with the research participant. In other words, one expects
the researcher to pose additional questions to the participant based on the
participant's reflective statements, but the researcher does not usually
" think out loud" to the participant about the researcher's self-evaluation
vis-a-vis the research. Th us, Rose fails to appreciate the advance that
feminism offers over positivism in its approach to interviews. An extended
notion of reflexivity further advances the methodology of interviews con
ducted within a feminist research epistemology.
Extend i ng the Notlon of Reflexlvlty
Where the identities of the researcher and research participant are discor
da nt, reflexivity is advocated as an aid in pushing past this barrier ( Hertz,
1 9 9 7 ) . Thoughtful reflection on one's research practice, one's subjectivity
rel ative to that practice, and self-criticism and change where warranted
would certainly seem to improve the process and outcome of methodologies
in which the researcher herself is an instrument of the research ( see figure
6 . l ( d ) ) . The limits of this conception of reflexivity are demonstrated by the
presentation of reflexive practice in scholarly writing. Reflexive researchers
take one or both of two approaches when including their reflexive stance ( s )
i n research reports. O n e is t o share introspective notes from a personal or
field journal. For example, Diane Reay wrote of her anxiety about her
subjectivity and its limitations for her fieldwork in her diary ( Reay, 1 996,
p. 446 ) . This tack permits the author to reflect further about the intersub
jective nature of her work, as well as make clear to readers that her practice
has been reflexive. A second approach is simply to describe one's circum
stances so that readers may ostensibly decide for themselves what impact
the individual's life and self has had upon the study. Certainly both
representations of a (conventionally) reflexive approach are an improve
ment over the alternative, implicit assumption that the researcher is an
"objective " reporter of the research. Unfortunately, neither offers much in
the way of advancing a study. Instead, they may aid in the evaluation of a
study, or j ust help the ethnographer learn about her own life (Wasserfall,
1 993 ) . Such a researcher-focused use of reflexivity seems to truncate the
possibilities inherent in a powerful idea. That is, reflexivity here is limited
to a solitary consideration of oneself, as though one were gazing at a single
reflection in a mirror and ignoring the myriad reflections from the other
mirrors lining the walls of the room.
Kim England ( 1 994 ) and Rose ( 1 997), for example, have each written
of "a sense of failure" regarding their attempts to conduct interview-based
research consistent with feminist, post-positivist principies. England, for
instance, did not pursue a particular line of research inquiry because of
issues of racialized and sexualized identity, and power, concerning her
research assistant. And, although Rose completed her project, her inability
to interpret and understand an interviewee's joke about their respective
nationalities continues to trouble her. In each case, self-reflexive introspec
tion has been unable to resolve the troubling issues raised by the feminist
alt ernative to positivist inquiry.
Ethnographers, in particular, have begun to push the idea of reflexivity
beyond application to the researcher, by the researcher, to include research
participants' insights. In her participant observation of gender, hierarchy
1 10 K A R E N F A L C O N E R A L - H I N D I A N D H O P E KAWA B ATA
and space in West Africa, feminist geographer Heidi Nast extended the
idea of reflexivity to include " learning to recognize others' constructions of
us through their initiatives, spaces, bodies, judgment, prescriptions, pro
scriptions, and so on" ( Nast, 1 99 8 , p. 94; emphasis added ) . Nast had
severa! uncomfortable experiences during her fieldwork in Nigeria ( see
Nast, 1 99 8 , for a more complete discussion ) . Each concerned Nast's body:
its placement, dress, or movement. For example, shortly after her arrival in
the city of Kano, Nigeria, Nast decided to visit the royal palace. Her
preparation included donning an elaborate head covering and garments she
believed were appropriate for the visit. Her knowledge of Hausa language
was adequate; however, to understand the remark made by one concubine
to another as Nast entered the palace concerning the " i diot " passing by.
Later she learned that she had not covered her head properly for someone
of her social situation, and that this was the occasion for the concubine's
remarks. This as well as other incidents helped Nast to learn about the
person or people who placed her based on their interpretations of her:
" Feeling their surveillance and listening to their sexualized comments
helped me recognize them as much as they helped me recognize myself in
terms other than my own " (Nast, 1 99 8 , p. 1 0 9 ) . Similarly, anthropologist
Lila Abu-Lughod has described feeling utterly naked befare a Bedouin elder
because her head was uncovered, not because that is how her culture
defined nakedness, but because it was how his did so (Abu-Lughod, 1 9 8 8 ) .
This conceptualization o f reflexivity points toward an understanding o f the
constitution of difference, or identity, in the research process ( Rose, 1 997,
p. 3 1 3 ) .
Nast's and Abu-Lughod's operationalizations o f reflexivity extend the
meaning and utility of the concept much farther than usual. Instead of
reflexivity as reflectivity, or gazing at oneself, these scholars are centrally
interested in themselves only in the gaze of others ( see figure 6 . l ( e ) ) . And,
far from being satisfied to learn about themselves through others' eyes, they
return the look - now informed by the " others' " gaze - to the other in
arder to learn from her: how she {the participant) sees/places/interprets me
{ the researcher ) tell me about her, her worldview, her categories ? By
redefining the use of oneself as an instrument of research, these scholars
are positioned both to learn more about the phenomenon under study and
to share power with their research participants.
The more fully reflexive approach is readily employed in ethnography,
or participant observation, as we have seen. The sustained engagement
between researcher and subj ects required by the participant observation
method provides ample opportunity for encounters such as Nast and Abu
Lughod describe to occur, and for the researcher to reflect upon and learn
from them ( see also Nagar, 1 997). But in-depth, semi-structured interviews
can also be more fully reflexive. For instance, in their studies of cultural
R E F L EX I V E F E M I N I ST G E O G RA P H Y 111
identity among Chinese youth in Britain, Song and Parker ( 1 99 5 ) empha

size that their participants positioned their own identities relative to those
chey presumed were the authors'. Although neither author intended to do
so, over the course of their research projects they faund that they had de
facto used their 'selves' - their bodies, their names, their identities - as
integral components of the research.
These bodies/selves must be faund somewhere, of course, and geographic
s pace is central to a more fully reflexive approach in feminist geography.
In che fallowing illustration far example, I highlight the role that leaving
Ou's office far the elevator lobby seemed to play in shifting the tenor and
content of her conversation with Hope. Although the relational space that
che two of them had established during their interview did not change,
cheir physical location did, and with it carne new possibilities far their
interaction. Similarly, in Nast's retelling of her fieldwork experiences in
Kano, Nigeria, social space plays a prominent role. She became the obj ect
of critica!, sexualized remarks when she walked through the concubines'
area of the Kano Palace, and carne to an understanding of their view of her
after she understood their social and physical place within the social
hierarchy. As Soja ( 1 9 8 0 ) and Pred ( 1 9 8 4 ) remind us, social and spatial
relations are dialectical and ever-becoming. Women and men transfarm
places through their interactions in and with them; simultaneously these
gendered beings are defined and perhaps altered by the places themselves.
If the researcher is open to self-critically reflexive involvement with her
participant (as in those instances described above) , an interview methodol
ogy can incorporate a more foil reflexivity. In fact, I suggest that England's
( 1 994) and Rose's ( 1 997) reponed " sense of failure" regarding their
respective research projects might have been mitigated by such an
approach. Drawing on Foucault's synaptic, productive conception of
power, Julie-Kathie Gibson-Graham ( 1 994 ) and Rose ( 1 997), far example,
recognize participants' knowledges as powerful because they are produc
tive. If feminist researchers really believe in sharing power and validating
the knowledges of research participants, we must pursue their perspectives
and invite their observations, no matter how uncomfartable far us these
may be. I have faund such an approach very illuminating, as Hope shows
in the fallowing section.
Hope's l l l u stration
1 ( Hope ) undertook in-depth, semi-structured interviews with ethnic minor

ity women who worked from home, in 1 997 ( Kawabata, 1 99 7 ) . The
purpose of my research was to investigate the mutually constitutive rela
tio ns among geography (in particular, spaces of the home ) , gender, ethnic-
1 12 KA R E N F A L C O N E R A L - H I N D I A N O H O P E KAWAB ATA
ity, and work : did performing regular paid work tasks from home using
telecommunications technology such as a computer modem rather than
physically commuting to the workplace reinforce or challenge these
women's ideas of themselves as members of specific ethnic groups, as paid
professionals, and as women/mothers/wives ?
When 1 ( 1 am Japanese ) asked Ou Johnson (pseudonym for an American
woman of Chinese descent) about how women's roles in Chinese culture
are different from American women's roles, Ou answered "I think they are
similar. 1 think in your culture, 1 can see it being very different. " 1 then
asked, " do you mean Japanese and American are different, but Chinese
and American are kind of similar ? " She answered "yes , " based on her
perception of her own mother, whom, Ou believed, acted like an Anglo
woman. She also based her answer on her mother's view of Japanese
women, whom Ou's mother viewed as totally different from Chinese
women.
Ou perceived me positively, as an Asian, and as a foreigner. O u has
never been friends with Chinese Americans, Chinese people, or even other
Asians, in part because there was only one other Chinese family in the
midwestern city where she grew up. She mentioned to me the discrimina
tion she faced during a visir to California from Chinese Americans there.
She did not feel comfortable with Chinese Americans, but felt comfortable
with me. She told me that if 1 were part of the Asian group, she would be
willing to try to get to know them. So Ou saw me as a foreigner and as an
Asian, in contrast to herself, whom she viewed as an " American Asian . "
She roughly compared her identity with what she imagined mine to be: " 1
feel like I ' m American . . . with the Chinese background, versus you,
Japanese, j ust the opposite " ( Kawabata, 1 997, p. 5 6 ) .
Ou wanted t o know m y Japanese o r Asian point o f view o n certain
matters. This was why, following the conclusion of our " interview , " Ou
walked me out to the elevator of her office building, where our conver
sation continued for sorne minutes. 1 was taken aback when Ou asked me:
" How about you, Hope ? 1 bet you have been discriminated against with
your nationality in this country, haven't you ? " After 1 discussed this
interaction with Karen (and after 1 had dealt with my shock ) , 1 carne to an
interpretation of what Ou meant. 1 believe that 1 was surprised that an
Asian woman would ask another Asian woman this question. Karen
suggested that Ou, perhaps with a lingering Chinese prej udice against
Japanese people and with knowledge of the Japanese internment during
WWII in this country, assumed that 1 would face discrimination by Anglos.
Karen further suggested that Ou's question shocked me because of a
remnant of prej udice against the Chinese on my part. 1 do not agree with
this at ali. In any case, 1 understand with stark clarity how different from
myself and how like Anglo-Americans Ou perceived she ( O u ) was.
R E F L E X I V E F E M I N I S T G E O G RA P H Y 113
Karen's l nterpretatlon
Both physical and relational space are crucial in the process of the more
fu lly reflexive interview. Here, by walking together out of Ou's office and
to the elevator lobby of her building, Ou and Hope marked the end of the
formal interview and signaled a transition to their meeting's conclusion.
Having left the space of her office, Ou may have felt that the focus was no
longer on her, and perhaps felt more at liberty to remark on her interpre
tation of Hope's identity and situation as a foreigner in the US. Similarly,
Song and Parker ( 1 99 5 ) interviewed young Asian immigrants in their
families' places of business. Both researchers found themselves identified
and categorized in sometimes uncomfortable ways that revealed much
about their participants' views of the world and themselves. The research
ers' identities and selves may have been more " up for grabs " on the
interviewee's " turf. "
These examples highlight the power of a fuller reflexivity in feminist
interviewing. Through the view of herself in the eyes of the ( O )ther, Hope
formed an interpretation of herself (how she might be perceived by sorne
other Asians, especially those of Chinese heritage ) and, more important
from a research perspective, about Ou's placement of herself in relation to
Hope. This latter is the important contribution of the reflexive stance to
feminist research. Hope learned about how different from " Asians " and
" foreigners " Ou viewed herself, despite the fact that others (Anglos, say )
might see her as very different from themselves. Ou's relational " place
ment" of Hope, for example, told her a great <leal about Ou's understand
ing of her own position. Ou <loes not see herself as an outsider to an
American nationality; in fact, she claims such an identity as her own .
Regarding the research, this means that the fulfilment or avoidance of an
ethnidracialized minority role could not have motivated Ou to pursue a
telecommuting work arrangement. Drawing upon her interpretation of
Hope's identity permitted O u to communicate her view of herself more
clearly than she did at any other point in the interview.
Poss i b i l lties
What can a researcher do to ensure that her interviews are more fully
reflexive ? Most importantly, after Nast ( 1 99 8 ) , I recognize that true
reflexivity means letting go, allowing the possibility for being out of
control. Nast is interested in the out-of-controlness of situations where our
bodies are inscribed, prohibited, or disciplined according to others' world
views and interpretations of our bodies; I am more interested in the loss of
1 14 N
KAR E N FALC O E R Al - H I N D I AN D H O P E
KAWAB ATA
con trol th at interv iewers can experience in a truly non-hierarchical conver

sation w ith a research pa rtic ipant, in whic h that participant feels comfort
a ble eno ugh to reveal to me her pos ition ing of me relative to herself or her
experiences. Hope's experience wit h Ou illustrates the unexpected nature
of others' resp onses to and posi tionin gs of the researcher. Willingness to
give up control over the interview, as well as to share information about
oneself, are keys to the possi bility of a more full reflexivity . As Hanson has
written: "I would like to see us devise methods and methodologies that
maximize the chance that we will see things we were not expecting to see,
that leave us open to surprise, that do not foreclose the unexpected . . . .
Pursuing this goal is likely to entail a letting go, a conscious attempt to
relinquish control over the research process " ( Hanson, 1 997, p. 1 2 5 ) .
As social science research, a n d feminist research specifically, transforms
itself from an endeavor that attempts to follow a " hard " science model to
a project that writes about people/ourselves and the world as people/we
experience it, scholarly writing is irrevocably altered, as well. Writing about
research conducted in the more fully reflexive mode that 1 have described
here requires that the researcher identify and locate herself, not j ust in the
research, but also in the writing. She must be willing to write and so re-live
discomforting experiences, to look awkward and feel ill at ease. She must
commit to paper and thus to the scrutiny of peers and others that which
she might prefer to forget. But the pay off, 1 feel, will be worth it.
The more fully reflexive approach offers three advantages. First, rather
than targeting difference per se, a fuller reflexivity helps one to understand
how identity is constituted during the research process itself. 1 want to
know how the research participant locates herself within the world as she
lives it, and 1 recognize that identity shifts in relation to context; the
research situation and researcher provide a context against which the
participant may " bounce " her sense of self. Second, by providing an
additional, positioned view of the researcher, a fuller reflexivity helps to
make the researcher's positionality vis-a-vis the research more clear. For
example, Hope's conversation with Ou revealed the possibility of an
unexpectedly strong ethnic nationalism. Finally, this approach may help to
share power with the participant more equitably than is possible with other
methodologies, and validates the participant more fully as a knower. That
Ou could pose the question she did to Hope suggests that Ou was
empowered by the interview process and so made a more full partner in it.
More fully reflexive research, and writing, bring the scholarly community
as well as the larger communities of which each of us is a part more and
better information about the world(s) which we seek to understand.
R E F L E X I V E F E M I N I S T G E O G RA P H Y 115
A C K N OW L E D G E M E N T S
Hope would like t o thank Karen, who w a s her thesis advisor. Karen helped Hope
th ink critically on her j ourney to Christian feminism. Hope dedicates ali her
graduate work to her grandmother Kitazawa who passed away in 1996. Above ali,
sh e returns ali the glory to the One who created her. Karen would like to thank
Hope for her collaboration on this project. She is grateful for the insightful
suggestions and warmth of The Writing Group, whose members " aspire to wise . "
She dedicates this chapter t o her son Sean, whose gestation and first year coincided
with its writing.
R E S E A R C H TIP
J argon i n Fem i n i st Geograp hy
What can be particularly daunting for the initiate of feminist geo

graphical research literature is that she or he is walking into a
conversation which has been going on for the past three decades.
Over time , feminist geographers have been developing their own
inner debates , vocabulary, theoretical premises, and modes of inter
action. When first attempting to wade through this seemingly endless
jargon, looking up terms like " feminism " or " poststructuralism " in the
dictionary provoke only anxiety. Terms like " paradoxical space " or
" positionality " probably won ' t even be there. We found keeping a
small notebook with our ongoing thoughts about what these terms
mean useful in developing an understanding of feminist geographical
research and providing a path for critique.
7
People Like U s:
N egotiating Sameness and Difference
in th e Research Process
Gil/ Va/entine
Th i n kl ng About Fem l n i st Research
Over the last two decades, positivist understandings of obj ective, impartial,
value-free knowledge, in which the researcher plays the role of omnipotent
expert extracting information from the passive subject, have been subject
to extensive feminist and postcolonial critiques.
In particular, " feminism has challenged traditional epistemologies of
what are considered valid forms of knowledge" (WGSG, 1 997, p. 8 7 ) . Far
example, in the 1 9 80s writers such as Dale Spender ( 1 9 8 1 ) and Liz Stanley
and Sue Wise ( 1 9 8 3 ) questioned the notion of universal knowledge,
highlighting the way that research done on men had been used to represent
ali human experiences and that as a consequence women's experiences had
been missed out at best and misrepresented at worst. In such critiques
feminists also drew attention to the hierarchical power relationships
implicit in research relationships, pointing out the ways in which the
researcher is positioned as the powerful expert and the respondent as the
passive subject ( Oakley, 1 9 8 1 ) .
A s a product of these feminist critiques o f research feminist epistemol
ogies have emerged ( Cope, chapter 3, this volume ) . These advance alterna
tive forms of knowledge ( such as personal experience ) , highlight the
non-neutrality of the researcher, and promote a sensitivity to the power
relations which are inherent in the research process ( Stanley and Wise,
1 9 8 3 ; WGSG, 1 997). In particular, feminists have drawn attention to the
fact that ali knowledge is produced in specific contexts or circumstances
and that these situated knowledges are marked by their origins ( Haraway,
1 99 1 ; Harding, 1 99 1 ) . This acknowledgement of the situatedness of
knowledge has led to a recognition of the importance of the " position" or
" positionality" of the researcher: that we see the world from specific
N E G O T I AT I N G S A M E N E S S A N D D I F F E R E N C E 117
embodied locations ( Rose, 1 99 7 ) . This in turn emphasizes the need for

each of us to be self-reflexive - in other words to make our own
" positions " and the implications of these explicit and known in order to
overcome false notions of neutrality ( see for example McDowell, 1 992a;
Mattingly and Falconer Al-Hindi, 1 995; Moss, 1 99 5 a ) . England ( 1 994,
p . 82) refines this definition of reflexivity as " self-critical sympathetic
introspection and the self-conscious analytical scrutiny of the self as the
researcher. "
This chapter focuses on these notions of positionality and reflexivity. It
begins by examining the way that feminists initially employed these con
cepts, and then goes on to consider sorne contemporary critiques of them.
1 then use sorne of my own experiences as a researcher to illustrate and
explore these critiques further. The conclusion reflects on the importance
of these debates.
Landscapes of Power?
The notions of positionality and reflexivity have raised many troubling

questions about the politics and ethics of whom is entitled to research
particular topics . In particular, because of the power relations inherent in
the research process sorne writers have argued that researchers should not
work with groups who are positioned as less powerful than themselves,
and that to do so is unethical. For example, black women and lesbians
have critiqued the way white and/or heterosexual researchers have con
ducted research on these groups - appropriating their voices and represent
ing their lives ( England, 1 994 ), safe in the knowledge that having got " a
b i t o f the other, " they can always return t o their privileged position a s
white o r heterosexual ( Bondi, 1 990b, p. 1 6 3 ) .
Sorne o f these debates have suggested that researchers who share the
same identities with their informants, as for example a woman carrying
out research with women, are positioned as " insiders " and as such have
truer access to knowledge and a closer, more direct connection with their
informants than those who are " outsiders . " Underlying this notion of being
an " insider " is the assumption that they can somehow produce a more
correct interpretation of informants' responses. In contrast, "outsiders " are
assumed to have more cultural baggage to <leal with. For example, com
menting on her experience of interviewing women, Janet Finch argued that
her interviewees identified with her as another woman. She explains they
expected "me to understand what they mean [t] simply because 1 am
another woman" ( Finch, 1 9 84, p. 76 ) . She went on to claim that to her it
was: " [my] status and demeanour as a woman rather than anything to do
with the research process, upon which they based their trust in me" ( Finch,
118 G I L L VALE NTI N E
1 9 8 4 , p . 8 1 ) . Likewise, Marj orie Devault ( 1 990, p . 1 02 ) argued that a s a

woman interviewing women she is able to read between the lines and
translate what is being said by the woman she is interviewing. She writes:
"I can listen 'as a woman,' filling in from experience to help me understand
the things that are incompletely said. " She makes these claims on the basis
that " women interviewing women is what women have done far gener
ations - understanding one another. "
Such claims have been supported by sorne studies o f interview tran
scripts. Williams and Heikes ( 1 993 ) studied interviews with nurses con
ducted by both male and female interviewers, concluding that the
infarmants responded differently according to the gender of their inter
viewer. This they argued was because the interviewee used the interviewers'
gender to gauge the interviewers' opinions and responded accordingly.
However, such understandings of the research process are also problem
atic because of the way that they (re)produce an insider/outsider dualism
and assume that situated knowledge can be accessed through reflection
alone. Sorne of the assumptions outlined above, far example that women
interviewing women automatically have insider status, have been criticized
as a nalve and dangerous farm of essentialism because they uncritically
attribute particular connections ar a rapport to physical attributes such as
sex, ar race ( Kobayashi, 1 994 ). These dualistic categorizations - insider/
outsider - which are often based on other dualisms such as "white/black, "
" male/female," " heterosexual/gay" have also been challenged because of
the way they obscure the diversity of experiences and viewpoints between
and within various groups.
Reflecting on her experiences of interviewing women as part of her work
as a research assistant while an undergraduate student, Melissa Gilbert
( 1 994 ) observes that the commonalities she shared with her interviewees as
a woman were undercut by other differences. They were ali mothers,
Gilbert was not. They were ali poorer and had received less education than
Gilbert. Sorne belonged to different racialized groups. As such Gilbert felt
very uncomfartable about her material advantages and perhaps rather
nai·vely tried to negare her privileges and faster a sense of sameness with
the women by chain-smoking and making sure that they knew that she too
lived on the rough side of town .
Likewise, as part of research with black and white women who have
returned to full-time education, Ros Edwards ( 1 990, p. 2 8 6 ) , a white
academic faund that: "I had to take very direct initiatives to place myself
as a woman; the black women were not willing to do the placing far me in
any other way than race. My placing was not j ust as a woman but as a
white woman . " Unlike Gilbert, Edwards responded not by trying to
emphasize the similarity of her experiences but by locating and acknowl
edging her difference. By making clear that she was aware that she lacked
N E G O T I AT I N G S A M E N E S S A N D D I F F E R E N C E 119
a shared understanding of black women's experiences of the public world,

sh e found that the women were more willing to talk freely.
Others have had less success at negotiating difference. Kim England
( 1 994) for example has written about her failed attempts as a heterosexual
women to complete a research project about lesbian lives. She writes: " Of
co urse, ali the sympathy in the world is not going to enable me to truly
understand what it is like for another woman to live her life as a lesbian "
( England, 1 994, p. 8 6 ) . England's paper describes how her research project
encountered difficulties because as a heterosexual woman she was in a
more privileged and powerful position than the lesbians she was attempting
to work with. These sorts of examples raise troubling issues about ques
tions of power.
In a review of feminist writing about positionality Gillian Rose ( 1 997,
p. 3 1 3 ) critiques what she terms the " reflexive landscape of power . " She
argues that the way feminist writers have conceptualized power relations
in the research relationship meaos that " the relationship between researcher
and researched can only be mapped in one of two ways: either as a
relationship of difference, articulated through an objectifying distance; or
as a relationship of sameness, understood as the researcher and researched
being in the same position . " She goes on to point out that there is no sense
that researcher and interviewee may understand across " difference " or fail
to connect through their " sameness. " Indeed, notions of " insiderness/
outsiderness" suggest that the relationship between researcher and inform
ant can be reduced to social categories such as gender or class and as such
these identities are somehow fixed or frozen. Rather writers such as Ann
Phoenix ( 1 994 ) and Bev Mullings ( 1 999) point out that the boundary
between the researcher and informant is a highly dynamic and unstable
boundary, and that connections and dislocations are about wider biograph
ical moments, much more than social identities such as gender. As such
Bev Mullings ( 1 999, p. 4) suggests that researchers need to seek what she
terms " positional spaces," "where the situated knowledge of both parties
in the interview encounter, engender a level of trust and co-operation . " She
goes onto suggest that it's better to find such transitory shared spaces that
are not informed by identity-based differences because, identities such as
gender and class are " rarely fail-safe indicators of an individual's
positionality. "
Thinking about her own positioning Pamela Moss ( 1 999, p. 1 5 8 ) drew
up a list of adj ectives: "white, female, high income, ill, vegetarian-who
wants-to-be-a-vegan, and a wannabe blande. " But she reflects they " made
no sense without the substance of everyday living that would pull all these
positions together into a life, my life. 1 cannot tell you everything about
me. " As such, it is impossible for us to unpick how the mutual constitution
of gender, class, race, sexuality works in order to identify this as the gender
1 20 G I L L VALE N T I N E
effect o r th at a s the whiteness effect. Rather, as Julie-Kathy Gibson-Graham

( 1 994, p . 2 1 9 ) explains, "I am a unique ensemble of contradictory and
shifting subj ectivities. " Dualisms such as insider/outsider can never there
fore capture the complex and multi-faceted identities and experiences of
researchers.
Our positionings in relation to our interviewees are never a priori,
readily apparent or defined. Rather, they unfold in the course of the
encounter ( Nast, 1 994 ) . The interview is always a joint production. Con
nections are not made by researcher alone, as researchers we are also
positioned by those we work with ( Gibson-Graham, 1 9 94 ) . As such we
need to recognize that sameness and differences are produced in, and
through the research relationship. Drawing on the work of feminist theorist
Judith Butler, Rose ( 1 997) emphasizes the relational character of identity
which is always produced through mutually constitutive social relations,
arguing that interviewer and interviewee fashion a particular performance
of self in interaction . She writes: " social identity is [also] made and remade
through the research process . . . What we research is our relation with the
researched " ( Rose, 1 997, p. 3 1 5 ) . She continues " She [the researcher] is
situated, not by what she knows, but by what she uncertainly performs"
( Rose, 1 99 7, p. 3 1 6 ) .
I n this sense Rose argues that the research process i s complex, uncertain
and incomplete. Complex because of the diverse intersections of identities
and biographies; uncertain because performances might be misread; and
incomplete because identities can only be sustained through repetition.
Puttlng Theory l nto Practlce
For the remainder of this chapter I want to flesh out sorne of the issues I
have outlined so far by drawing on my own experiences - as an "out"
lesbian interviewing other lesbians as part of a research project on sexual
ity; and as a researcher interviewing parents about different aspects of their
children's lives where my sexuality was not disclosed. I also draw on the
experiences of other researchers to illustrate how identifications and dis
identifications are produced in specific performative moments.
As I outlined above, sorne of the discussion about the research process
has talked in terms of fixed identities which are conceptualized in terms of
clear and socially recognizable differences such as gender. In practice, the
way researchers and interviewees perform our identities and read those of
others are uncertain. The identifications and disidentifications we make are
complex, with many different notions of sameness and differences operat
ing at the same time. Both researchers and interviewees directly or indirectly
claim points of sameness or difference during interviews based not only on
N E G O T I AT I N G S AM E N E S S A N D D I F F E R E N C E 121
knowledge which is exchanged during these conversations but also on what

is read off from each others' performances. In other words, as the interview
develops, we are constantly (re)producing " ourselves" so that both
researcher and interviewee may be multiply positioned during the course of
an interview. Ward and Janes ( 1 999) describe the " interview process as a
game of positionalities . "
For example, during the course o f m y research o n sexuality 1 interviewed
one woman whom 1 have given the pseudonym Jane. Jane began the
interview assuming and establishing a commonality with me as another
lesbian . Through our initial conversations about the nature of lesbian
relationships and social networks Jane contrasted " u s " with her heterosex
ual friends and colleagues, even though the imaginings into which she
embraced me were not necessarily experiences or views which 1 actually
shared. However, as the interview progressed Jane also began to distinguish
herself from me, arguing that as a younger and middle-class lesbian able to
earn a living from researching sexuality 1 " had it much easier" than older
lesbians like herself. Jane clearly positioned herself as part of a generation
who had been at the forefront of campaigns to win recognition for lesbian
and gay rights, arguing that "you young dykes don't understand what
being gay was like then . " Later, the discussion with Jane moved onto
experiences of discrimination and violence. When it became apparent that
we had shared sorne similar encounters Jane remembered that earlier she
had assumed a generational difference from me, and from then on it
became clear that she was uncertain about how to place me.
When 1 have conducted interviews with parents for research proj ects
about aspects of children's lives the discussions have often begun not from
a premise of our sameness - as the interviews with other lesbians did - but
from a premise of difference. A difference presumed because 1 do not have
children and in many cases because the respondents also assumed (some
times mistakenly ) that 1 was younger than themselves.
Like the presumptions of sameness 1 encountered in the interviews with
other lesbians, so too these presumptions of difference were re-negotiated
as the interviews unfolded. For example, during the course of my interview
with Janet and Brian, a white middle-class couple with two children, the
i nitial presumption of distance between my identity and experiences and
their own, which was evident in phrases such as " well, as parents we . . . "
soon gave way and it became apparent that 1 was being embraced into an
i magining of sameness epitomized by phrases such as "people like us" and
" we . " This was not only a product of the fact that we ali shared a class
and racial identity but also because 1 fitted in with them in many other
ways too. Both Brian and 1 shared the connection of working in higher
education institutions while Janet and 1 shared sorne of the same values
because of our similar family backgrounds.
1 22 G I L L VA L E N T I N E
How ever, J an et and Brian's presumption of my sameness was also

partially predicated on their misreading of my identity. While 1 did not
deliberately " pass" as heterosexual during the interview, the assumption of
heterosexuality in most everyday contexts (Valentine, 1 993 ) is so strong
that ali the interviewees took it for granted that 1 too was heterosexual and
th rough my performance 1 did nothing to disrupt this reading of my
identity. In this way, many layers of sameness and difference can be
operating at the same time, with the participants and researcher simul
taneously identifying and disidentifying with each other, while not even
perceiving or recognizing the ( dis)connections being made by the other. In
Wallman's terms ( 1 978, p. 2 1 2 ) we would each draw " the line of differ
ence " between us in a different place. In turn the ways in which both
participants and researchers read each others' identities influences what
each feels it is safe to disclose. As a consequence of these complex ways
that positionings are (re) negotiated throughout interviews it is impossible
to fully know or understand how these shape the knowledge produced
from the encounter.
Reflecting on her experiences as a self-identified lesbian and feminist
doing a research project interviewing women from the moral right with
anti-feminist views, Dona Luff ( 1 99 9 ) comments not on the way her
identity was read by her informants but rather on her own readings of her
interviewees' identities and how these too were fluid and subj ect to
(re) negotiation. Luff ( 1 999) observes that while much is written about how
a researcher should dress, and the impact this can have on the way their
identity will be read by informants and the consequent interview process,
we rarely reflect on our readings of others' bodily performances. Yet Luff
found herself reading her informants' identities from their dress. In this
excerpt from her diary, she reflects on the confu sions that can occur when
identities read in this way appear to run counter to researchers'
expectations.
She confused my stereotypes ! 1 unconsciously found myself thinking that she

appeared more like a " feminist" than the "moral right " (now what <loes that
tell me? That somewhere 1 think feminists wear trousers and lots of earrings
not printed " frocks" - do 1 even fit my own stereotype ? ! ) Her home was also
very different from the others, but many of her views were actually more
conservative than many of the women [who wear nice dresses and have
immaculate homes] . 1 left feeling confounded. (Luff, 1999, p. 694)
Luff goes on to reflect further on the troubling issue of performances,

observing that many of the women she interviewed - whom she would in
everyday life have dismissed as religious fanatics - were nice people with
whom she shared intelligent, thought-provoking conversations. Such that
N E G O T I AT I N G S A M E N E S S A N D D I F F E R E N C E 1 23
she simultaneously liked and disliked the same person. Indeed, not only did
she find her own views challenged, but sometimes she found herself in
broad agreement with them.
In a similar way, when interviewing parents about their children for
va rious research projects 1 too have found myself sharing a sense of
connection and warmth with sorne interviewees, despite the fact they have
articulated unpleasant homophobic views ( while it is difficult to be posi
tioned by interviewers in ways which are objectionable, Phoenix ( 1 994,
p. 57) argues that the articulation of such viewpoints is the whole point of
interviews since they are intended to "evoke respondents' " accounts rather
than to hear one's own discourses reflected back ) . In one case in particular,
1 established a good rapport with, and warmed to, a homophobic couple
who were extremely personable and welcoming and we spent a long time
after the interview chatting and having a drink. In contrast, 1 have struggled
to develop a rapport and make a connection with lesbians with whom 1
superficially appear to have much in common. These sorts of interactions
show how unstable and shifting interview encounters are and how mean
ingless static identities and labels are. As Luff ( 1 999) points out people are
far more complex than labels such as " moral right" or " homophobic," no
interview situation is entirely negative, there is always sorne moment of
connection or rapport.
Indeed, it is worth remembering that a sense of connectedness or
sameness does not always prompt the disclosure of thoughts and feelings
between the researcher and the interviewee. Rather, it can serve to clase
clown the expression of diverse views as both participants seek to
(re) produce the illusion of sameness. In contrast, these openly acknowl
edged differences in which the interviewee is forthright about their views
or challenges the researcher can facilitate more open conversations.
These few examples - of how interviewees have read interviewers and
then how as interviewers we might read the performances of our interview
ees - question the notion of self-disclosure in the research process. In
research encounters the interviewer and interviewee are not locked into
static positions described by the usual co-ordinates of class, race, gender,
etc. Rather, the way we are positioned in relation to each other is a shifting
product of our own fluid performances of the self and the ways that these
are read by each other. Although, as interviewers and informants we might
think that we choose what we disclose, our performances can always be
read against our intentions. As such the way we understand and are
understood by each other is always elusive and uncontrollable, and the
interview situation unstable and full of ambivalent feelings.
The examples 1 have outlined so far are fairly conventional examples of
conversations and appearances. Ester Newton ( 1 993 ) points out however
that a lot of discussion about research relationships focuses on what is said
rather than ali the other things that might be going on between the
researcher and informant. She then goes on to reflect on the erotics of
fieldwork, that when researchers write about ethnography in the first
person they talk about thoughts and sometimes feelings, but never desire
or lust. The assumption is that sex and emotion between researchers and
their informants is absent (the only exception to this being the writing of
sorne women anthropologists about unwanted sexual attention of men or
not having sex with men for fear of losing credibility, personal danger,
failure of field work, etc. ) . Newton then goes on to present an account of
the relationship she, as a lesbian anthropologist, developed with her best
informant. She describes how while carrying out an ethnohistory of a
lesbian and gay community in Cherry Grove, a resort on Fire Island near
New York City, she fell in love with a woman called Kay. Reflecting on
their first meeting she writes, "Was it because 1 liked her cottage which still
had the diminutive charm of an earlier Cherry Grove, because 1 found her
beautiful and her suffering poignant, or because her allusions to past vices
intrigued me ? Or was it because she called me 'dear' that 1 carne away
enchanted ? " ( Newton, 1 993, p. 1 2 ) .
She then describes how they saw each other daily ( over a course o f two
years ) when Newton was in the field, and how their meetings were
flirtatious and full of erotic by-play. Kay helped Newton to negotiate access
in the field and persuaded people who had initially refused to be inter
viewed to take part. Newton uses this example to make a broader point
about how these encounters shape the research process: " my informants
and sponsors have usually been more to me than an expedient way of
getting information and something different from 'just friends. ' Information
has always flowed to me in a medium of emotion - ranging from passionate
(although unconsummated) erotic attachment to profound affection to
lively interest - that empowers me in my projects and, when it is recipro
cated, helps motívate informants to put up with my questions and intru
sions" (Newton, 1 993, p. 1 1 ) .
Newton goes on to call for more acknowledgement about our desires
for and feelings of repulsion towards our subj ects. While in Newton's case
the erotics of fieldwork were evident to both researcher and informant, this
is not always the case. When 1 asked a lesbian called Kate whom 1 had
interviewed, and who had also been interviewed by another lesbian
researcher called Wendy for a different project, to reflect on her experiences
of participating in research, Kate recalled that she had been strongly
attracted to Wendy. As a consequence the way that she had presented
herself in the interview had been shaped by her self-consciousness about
this attraction, and her desire to impress Wendy. Likewise, her reading of
Wendy had been undercut by a search for sexual meanings.
It is not only sexual emotions which go unacknowledged in research
N E G O T I AT I N G S AM E N E S S A N D D I F F E R E N C E 1 25
encounters. Rather, many interviews often evoke sorne degree of intimacy

- because they involve talking about things that are not normally talked
about. This intimacy can hold different meanings for the researcher and
the researched. 1 have left interviews that appeared "to go wel l " feeling
distressed; and likewise found sorne time later that a woman 1 interviewed
was very distressed after the event despite what 1 understood as our
connectedness and the apparent light nature of our conversation because
of issues it raised for her which she did not disclose in the interview. As El
Or ( 1 992, p. 6 5 ) suggests, there is a " delicate skin overlaying intimacy,
separating the overt and the covert, the normal and the abnormal . "
Indeed, while we, a s researchers have devoted considerable time to
attempting the impossible task of reflecting on our own role in the research
process we know little about how our informants experience, feel about,
or reflect upan their own participation ( Ribbens, 1 9 8 9 ) . Yet, as these
examples have demonstrated our informants' experiences and feelings play
just as significant a part in shaping the research encounter and the
information that emerges from it, as our own. As such there is perhaps a
need for sorne research with interviewees about their experiences of the
research process and its outcomes.
The U n knowab le and the Not Yet Known
The theoretical arguments about positionality and reflexivity, and the

empirical material which 1 have drawn on in this chapter, demonstrate the
multiple positionings and ( dis)identifications which are produced and
reproduced during the course of an interview. The incoherence of the self
which Rose ( 1 997, p. 3 1 4 ) describes as a " decentred site of differences " -
means, as she herself further argues, that the self can never be revealed
through the process of self-reflection .
Added to this, the extraordinarily complex nature and general messiness
of both the performance, and reading of identities which occur between
interviewers and interviewees (as exemplified above ) , mean that despite ali
the talk in feminist methodological debates about the importance of
acknowledging our positionality or redistributing power between
researcher and informant, in reality the research process is beyond the
understanding of the researcher. We cannot ever really know what is going
on in any given research encounter and therefore how the knowledge we
take from it is being produced, nor how the information we use might have
been different if our performances, those of our interviewees, or interac
tions between us, had been different.
This is not to suggest, however, that as researchers we should forget the
notion of being reflexive altogether. But rather than attempting the imposs-
ible quest of trying to identify a transparent knowable self, our focus

should instead be on looking at the tensions, conflicts and unexpected
occurrences which emerge in the research process (as exemplified above ) .
B y exploring these moments we mig h t begin to decenter our research
assumptions, and question the certainties that slip into the way we produce
knowledge.
1 am grateful to Pamela Moss for her very constructive comments on an earlier

draft of this chapter. 1 also thank Jenny Kerber for her close reading.
RESEARCH TIP
Personal Presentation i n Research Setti n gs
• Wear comfortable clothing.

• Dress in a culturally sensitive manner .
• Dress specific to research context.
• Wear slip-on shoes .
• Don't wear strong scents .
• Don 't smoke u n less invited to.
• Don 't chew gum.
• Wear a watch.
• Turn off pager or telephone, if applicable.
• Check teeth far spinach , poppy seeds, etc . !
PART 1 1 : S T U DY MAT E R I A L 1 27
S T U D Y M AT E R I A L F O R T H I N K I N G
ABOUT FEM I N IST RESEARCH
WO RDS
Agency
A n d ro-centrism
Authenticity
Cartesian d ualism
C u ltu ral appropriation
Deconstru ct/ deconstruction
Differe nce
Essentialism/anti-esse ntial ism
Hegemony
ldentity
l d e n tity politics
Misogyny
Other
Paradoxical space
Performativity
Political economy
Politics of knowledge
Positioning/ positio nality
Postmode rnism
Poststructu ralism
Racial ization
Reflexivity
Relativism
Representation
Self
S u bjectivity
Q U EST I O N S
Contemporary theory is often criticized for using too much jargon. The
chapters in this book contain severa! examples of specialized terms such as
"paradoxical space " and "autoethnography. " What are the advantages
and disadvantages of using specialized terminology ?
1 28 F E M I N I ST P E D A G O G Y WO R K I N G G RO U P
Think about rhe ways i n which you perform your own identity. Are
there differences depending upon where you are and who you are with ?
How <loes one decide whether a performance is authentic ?
Severa! authors talk about assumptions being made about them as, for
example, women or men, as researchers, as sexual beings, and as members
of rhe same social economic class. To what extent do you challenge, play
along with, or accept underlying assumptions about difference ? About
knowledge ? About research ?
Severa! of the chapters so far have referred to the high personal and
professional costs sorne feminists pay to do feminist research. For example,
rhere may be less funding than for more traditional projects; there seems to
be more pressure to explain feminist research and justify projects; and there
may need to be more time for the research that produces fewer traditional
products, for example, publications. Would you conduct feminist research
in the climate where you study ? How public would you be about your
work ? What issues do you need to consider while making such decisions?
What is ar stake for feminists who undertake or don 't undertake feminist
research in geography ?
E N GAG E D EXERCISE
Every act of translation implies sorne degree of alteration and interpre

tation of meaning. Cross-cultural research poses specific challenges to
the communication of information, not only because of linguistic differ
ences, but also because of the variations in conceptual categories that
play out in language. Meanings can be distorted when the concep
tualization behind words <loes not correspond with another person's or
culture's intended meaning. Variations in meaning may be determined
both spatially and linguistically. For example, a single plant can have
many common names, or might have even more than one scientific
name. We illustrate this point by recounting a research experience of
one of the members of our Working Group, whose research team is
concerned with the use of native plants by a First Nations group in the
interior of British Columbia . After conferring with elders about their
knowledge about and the location of the red-osier dogwood ( Cornus
stolonifera) , the research team was perplexed that the elders were unfam
iliar with this plant. The red-osier dogwood is commonly found along
waterways in the interior of British Columbia, and is known to be
of cultural significance to the peoples in this region. After completing
the first round of interviews, the team learned that the name for
C. stolonifera in that area is " red willow. " As one of the positive results
of this miscommunication, the research team now knows the appropriate
PART 1 1 : S T U DY MAT E R I A L 1 29
terminology for phrasing a useful research question particular cto chis

location.
This is but one example of the difficulties with translations and cross
cultural research. To explore the nuances of translation first hand, you
rnight try the following exercise using the website http://
www.babelfish.altavista.com/, a program set up to translate words and
p hrases from one language to another - often with startling results.
Write a brief paragraph in which you wish to convey a particular
rneaning. Enter the paragraph into the website as instructed, then translate
it first into another language, then into a second, and finally back to the
original. How has che meaning of the original paragraph been enhanced,
distorted, lost, or altered in the process of translation ?
For other sites concerned with language translations, interpretations,
and word associations, see also:
http://www.thinkmap.com
http://www. plumbdesign.corn/thesa urus/
www.thesaurus.com
www .onelook.corn/
http://www. tra vlang.corn/languages/
S U G G ESTE D F U RTH E R READ I N G
Thinking about research in feminist geography requires going beyond

writings specifically about methods and into writings challenging the ways
in which knowledge is produced and power is deployed and resisted.
Topics addressed throughout this section cover a wide range of methodo
logical issues as well as feminist conceptualizations of theory, power, and
knowledge. Suggestions for reading will necessarily fall short of expecta
tions precisely because the implications for research design, the conduct of
research, and analysis are never exhausted, nor are the " answers " very
clear. Bear in mind, then, this list is only a series of suggested entry points
into extensive literatures outside methodology per se.
On gender and space, see:
Bondi, L. 1 990a: Feminism, postmodernism and geography: space for women ?

Antipode 22, 1 5 6 - 67.
Laurie, N., Smith, F., Bowlby, S., Foord, J., Monk, S., Radcliffe, S., Rowlands, J.,
Townsend, J., Young, L. , and Gregson, N. 1 997: In and out of bounds and
resisting boundaries: feminist geographies of space and place. In Women and
Geography Study Group, Feminist Geographies, London: Longman, 1 1 2-45.
1 30 F E M I N I S T P E DA G O G Y WO R K I N G G RO U P
M assey, D . 1 994: Sp ace, Pla ce, and Gender. Minneapolis: University o f Minnesota
Press .
Rose, G . 1 993 : femin is m and Geography: The Limits of Geographical Knowledge.
Minneapo lis : Un iver sity of Minnesota Press.
On the politics of identity, see:
Bondi, L. 1 99 3 : Locating identity politics. In M. Keith and S. Pile (eds), Place and
the Politics of Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 8 4 -1 0 1 .
Jones, J . P . III, Nast, H . J . and Roberts, S. M. (eds) 1 997: 'Part One: Difference', in
Thresholds in Feminist Geography. Latham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,
1-1 1 5 .
On black women 's writings, see:
Collins, P. H. 2000: Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the

Politics of Empowerment. Revised tenth anniversary edn. London and New
York: Routledge.
hooks, b. 1 994: Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations. London and New
York: Routledge.
On racialization, see:
Anthias, F., Yuval-Davis, N. with Cain, H. 1 992: Racialized Boundaries: Race,

Nation, Gender, Colour, and Class and the Anti-racist. London and New York:
Routledge.
Anzaldúa , G . 1 9 8 7: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco:
Spinsters.
Kobayashi, A. and Peake, L. 1 994: Unnatural discourse: "race" and gender in
geography, Gender, Place and Culture, 1, 225-43.
On racialized colonial relations, see:
Alexander, M. J. and Mohanty, C. T. 1 9 97: Feminist Genealogies, Colonial

Legacies, Democratic Futures. London and New York: Routledge.
Mohanty, C. T., Russo, A. and Torres, L. (eds) 1 9 9 1 : Third World Women and
the Politics of Feminism. Bloomington : Indiana University Press.
PART 1 1 : S T U DY MAT E R I A L 131
O n performativity, see:
Butler, J. 1 9 90: Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London
and New York: Routledge.
Butler, J. 1 993: Bodies that Matter. London and New York: Routledge.
Gregson, N. and Rose , G. 2000: Taking Butler elsewhere: performativities, spatial
ities and subj ectivities, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1 8 ,
43 3 -552.
Nelson, L. 1 999: Bodies (and spaces) do matter: the limits of performativity,
Gender, Place and Culture, 6, 3 3 1- 5 3 .
On masculinism, see:
Berg, L. D. 1 99 8 : Reading (post)colonial history: masculinity, "race " , and rebel

lious natives in the Waikato, New Zealand, 1 8 6 3 , Historical Geography, 26,
1 01 -27.
Jackson, P. 1 99 1 : The cultural politics of masculinity: towards a social geography.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 1 6 , 1 99-2 1 3 .
On embodiment, see:
Butler, R. and Parr, H. (eds) 1 999: Mind and Body Space: Geographies of Illness,
Impairment and Disability. London and New York: Routledge.
Moss, P. and Dyck, l. 1 996: lnquiry into environment and body: women, work
and chronic illness, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 1 4 ,
737-53.
Nast, H. J. and Pile, S. (eds) 1 99 8 : Places through the Body. London and New
York: Routledge.
Teather, E. K. (ed. ) 1 999: Embodied Geographies: Spaces, Bodies and Rites of
Passage. London and New York: Routledge.
On hegemony, see:
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. 1 9 8 5 : Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a

Radical Democratic Politics. London: Verso.
Mouffe, C. 1 9 92: Feminism, citizenship and radical democratic politics, in J. Butler
and J. W. Scott (eds), Feminists Theorize the Political. London and New York:
Routledge, 369-84.
1 32 F E M I N I ST P E D A G O G Y WO R K I N G G R O U P
On the articulation of poststruduralism and feminism, see:
Nicholson, L. J. (ed. ) 1 990: Feminism/Postmodernism. London and New York:

Routledge.
Pratt, G. 1 99 3 : Reflections on poststructuralism and feminist empirics, theory and
practice, Antipode, 25, 5 1 - 6 3 .
On anti-essentialism a n d analysis, see:
Gibson-Graham, J.-K. 1 994: " Stuffed if 1 know " : reflections on post-modern

feminist social research, Gender, Place and Culture, 1 , 205-24 .
Spelman, E. V. 1 9 8 8 : lnessential Woman: Problems of Exclusion in Feminist
Thought. Boston: Beacon Press.
On institutional power and knowledge, see:
Smith, D . 1 990b: The Conceptual Practices of Power: A Feminist Sociology of

Knowledge. Boston: Northeastern University Press.
Mariniello, S. and Bové, P. 1 99 8 : Gendered Agents: Women and Institutional
Knowledge. Durham, N. C.: Duke University Press.
Part 1 1 1
Doing Feminist Research
Decentering Authority!
Short 3 Doing Geography as a Feminist
Reconsidering Success and Failure in Feminist Research
Maureen G. Reed
8 Doing Feminist Fieldwork about Geography Fieldwork
Karen Nairn
9 Quantitative Methods and Feminist Geographic Research
Mei-Po Kwan
10 Borderlands i n Feminist Ethnography
]oan Marshall
11 Negotiating Positionings: Exchanging Life Stories in Research
Interviews
Deirdre McKay
12 lnterviewing Elites: Cautionary Tales about Researching Women
Managers in Canada's Banking Industry
Kim V. L. England
13 Studying Immigrants i n Focus Groups
Geraldine Pratt
Study Material for Doing Feminist Research
Decentering Authority !
Feminist Pegagogy Working Group
For many of us, our experiences in learning have led us to believe that the
content of the books we read are true, that the authors are knowledgeable,
and that somehow together they constitute authority. During our school
days we were required to read textbooks and then tested on our knowledge
of " facts. " If we remembered what was written by the author { ity ) , we were
rewarded with high marks; if we responded with something different,
something other that what the author{ ity ) decreed, we received low marks.
If our answers were wrong, then, as the authoritative logic goes, we were
wrong too !
Being "wrong " has its advantages . Like with any hegemony, the author
ity of doing research included, we give way to dominant ideas that are
written by authors with authority and both knowingly and unknowingly
assist in perpetuating such ideas. We get caught up in routine complacency,
failing to question authors and authority. We end up repeating things we
have learned through reading sorne book, citing sorne article, or repeating
sorne argument and implicitly reproducing the same configurations of
authority within a particular field ( feminist methodology in geography
i ncluded ) . Yet at the same time as we are entranced and seduced by this
dominance, we know that there is space to resist power, to challenge
hegemonic stability, to contest authoritative writing. We don't have to
believe that the only good research is research that is value-free, scientific,
and reproducible. We don't have to validare our standing as researchers by
conforming to the academic standards based on a set of values feminists
have shown not to be useful for research topics associated with power
relations that oppress and marginalize individuals and groups of people.
And we don't have to use the same research methods that have been
1 36 F E M I N I ST P E DA G O G Y WO R K I N G G R O U P
deemed valid through generations o f authors writing about research claim

ing authority in the field of doing research.
In fact, we really have not forgotten those wise and well-intentioned,
albeit imperious and authoritative, words: " Don't believe everything you
read ! " But moving toward a corollary, " Don't believe anything you read ! "
may be too harsh and cynical because what really i s at issue i s not the
authority itself, but the process of creating authority. Authority involves
questioning who speaks, who gets to be heard, and who decides each.
Assessing authority involves focusing on knowers, forms of knowledge,
and what is and can be known as well as on identifying and evaluating
truth claims - those that write and represent the world. And, perhaps most
significant, is the context within which authority plays itself out - the
power that each of us brings to bear as multiply positioned " subjects "
within interwoven relations of power.
Our ideas about authority, as laid out here, infused our discussions
about the material in this book. What could we include ? Could we have an
on-line learning environment with ali the authors there for interaction and
debate ? Could we create virtual classrooms with group projects with
feminists across the globe ? What should we include ? Should we list the
articles that we found most useful in getting us to think about feminist
methodology ? Should we share our strategies about how we learned to do
feminist research ? Although we wanted to break that pattern of conven
tional texts that laid out word lists and questions for definition and
discussion, we realized that this was indeed the way we learned. We got to
know what issues we wanted to address and what tasks we wanted to
undertake through working through exercises with each other in and out
of class.
As practicing feminists, ali of us have shuddered to think that because
we have taken this opportunity to participate in contributing to a pedagog
ical proj ect about feminist methodology in geography, we might be con
sidered authorities - as a collective who knows because we've been there,
we've done that, and we've figured it ali out. At times, we nearly succumbed
to the (negative ) notion that we would be taken as an authority and
discussed what we thought the best way for students to learn how to
undertake feminist research in geography. At the same time we knew that
despite our " best intentions" we were complicit in silences and erasures
because our assumptions and arguments could not be removed from the
same power-laden contexts within which dominant accounts of knowledge
- like this textbook - are produced . We struggled with our angst over
whether we would be considered hypocritical and arrogant because we
dared to participate in developing a feminist textbook on research. Most of
us, at sorne time or another, anguished over these issues enough to think
about withdrawing from the project.
D E C E N T E R I N G A U T H O R I TY ! 1 37
But, as you already know, we did seize this opportunity to write our bit
of the world as we saw it. We realized that we faced many of the same
dilemmas that the feminists writing for this text did. Our quandaries arase
from our experiences in classrooms and in our everyday lives and we
decided that we wanted to be among those involved in working toward
decentering authority, toward destabilizing dominant masculinism that
continues to permeate teaching and learning, toward feminist transforma
tions of the classroom. So, even though we have selected what to
(re)produce in the learning materials, we did so with the realization that
readers would approach these words, information, and ideas with caution
and scrutinize them with a healthy <lose of skepticism.
The authors of the chapters in this section are concerned primarily with
particular methods associated with the actual " doing" of feminist research.
None however professes to have absolute confidence in or knowledge
about the choices they have made while doing feminist research. Each
struggles, at least implicitly, with the authority of not only her own work,
but also the work of feminist researchers in geography collectively. Karen
Nairn recounts the choices she made about putting together a research
project about data collection methods and design. She makes the point that
accessing similar information can come in many forms j ust as one piece of
information can hold different types of information. Mei-Po Kwan links
the use of quantitative methods to feminist research. She shows through
hands-on examples that feminist uses of quantitative data and analysis are
not only possible, but also necessary for sorne research questions. Joan
Marshall discusses severa! dilemmas she encountered while engaging in
ethnographic research with a closely knit community where she was an
outsider. She <loes not place the choices she made as solutions to problems,
but rather as resolutions to situations. Deirdre Mackay offers an intimate
look at the process through which she carne to understand how efforts at
reciprocity were offered and (possibly) received. She prompts us to think
about research as a "work in progress. " Kim England provides a wonderful
account of " studying up" and points out how research is not a smooth
process. She argues that research is not about the perfect or complete
project, but rather about " the art of making do. " Geraldine Pratt writes
about focus groups as a way to " decenter " the authority/centrality of the
researchers and the practice of research . Although focus groups may offer
the potential for less hierarchical relationships, Pratt reminds us that they
never disappear. Together these chapters spell out only a fraction of
methods available to feminist geographers undertaking research and of the
dil emmas they have or will face in the field.
S h o rt 3 D o i n g G eography as a Feminist
Reconsidering Success and Failure in

Feminist Research
Maure en G. Reed
lt didn't get anybody a full-time j ob, it didn't give a forest worker a job, it
didn't contribute to the renewal of our forests. ( " Brenda, " cited in the
Squamish Chie(, a local newspaper, about the outcomes of my research
proj ect in Squamish, Canada, 2000)
Thank you Maureen. Your concern is felt. (lnscription on a gift to me from

the non-governmental organization, North Island Women, Canada, 1 9 99)
This is an article written from a sense of failure. ( Rose, 1 997, p. 307)
1 face these quotations with grave ambivalence. 1 am ambivalent because

each quotation represents a different audience for research; each audience
holds different standards for the evaluation of its " success " and " failure. "
1 undertook a research proj ect that was intended to provide results for
public policy related to forestry practices and management of public lands.
lt was not a topic that readily lent itself to feminist research. lt was my first
project with an explicit feminist orientation; one of only two that would be
funded by this multi-million dollar research program. This combination -
public policy focus of the research, my lack of prior experience in feminist
research, the presumed dubious relevance of feminist research to the aims
of the funding agency, and my own desire to "make a difference " both
theoretically and in the lives of my research subjects - created for me a
near-impossible challenge for assessing the outcomes of the project. Hence,
my ambivalence. Upon reflection, 1 have become most disturbed by the
challenge of meeting the dual needs of academic scholarship with the
demands imposed by public policy. 1 am grave because 1 believe that this
quandary is likely to be reproduced again and again as the funding of
social science research becomes more heavily reliant on both public and
S U C C E S S A N D FAI L U R E I N F E M I N I ST R E S EARCH 1 39
private sources. As part of being in this quandary 1 ask myself, " how might
research by feminist geographers be affected by these changes ? "
Notice how 1 j uxtapose the " needs" of scholarship with " demands " of
public policy. 1 could have easily reversed these descriptions. 1 could have
discussed the challenge of meeting the demands imposed by scholarship
with the needs of public policy. Why do 1 consider the public policy aspect
of research a demand imposed from outside my own research agenda? 1
think there is more to it than simply reasoning that 1 am situated within an
academic environment. Rather, my positioning reflects my biases about
what 1 believe are the central aims and limitations of both the academy and
policy environments, and 1 am situated within changes in feminist scholar
ship itself. If feminist scholarship is rooted in attempts to explain and to
change unj ust social relations, then feminism has a direct application to
public policy. Yet, feminist scholarship in geography has increasingly
moved towards more theoretically informed, academically approved stan
dards for j udging research results ( McDowell, 1 992a; Bondi, this volume) .
What does this say about how far we have become entrained within
academic conventions for j u dging our successes and failures ? Perhaps more
importantly, how can we be directly engaged in these messy, real-world
debates without compromising the intellectual integrity of scholarship?
Funding agencies require feminist geography research to be policy
relevant. This demand widens the range of adj udicators and shapes research
expectations for our projects. These interconnections exist at ali phases of
the research process, from the formulation of a problem through the
generation of research questions, from the selection of methods and entry
into the " field" through analysis of results and their articulation and
circulation in both academic and policy forums. 1 view this as something
of a Faustian bargain - by accepting funding from such agencies, what
compromises might 1 have to make with respect to my own scholarly
integrity and feminist intentions ? While feminist researchers have examined
their own positionings in relation to their research subj ects (e.g. related to
similarities or differences of gender, class, sexuality or ethnicity ) , they have
been less attentive to positionings in relation to dynamics of the context of
the research - the tensions that arise between different expectations of the
academy, funding agencies and how the relationships between the two are
played out in setting priorities for research and criteria for evaluating
results.
Settlng Research Prlorltles and Practl ces
New research priorities are beginning at the outset to shape our research
questions and methods. For example, the major publicly funded social
1 40 MAU R E E N G . R E E D
science funding agency i n Canada, the Social Sciences and Humanities

Research Council ( SSHRC ), historically has provided research grants that
have not required a public policy focus as a criterion of relevance. But
times are changing. For individual researchers, SSHRC grant applications
now require applicants to identify how results will be " disseminated" and
made relevant outside the academy. For larger, collaborative proposals,
applicants are required to establish partnerships outside academia and to
demonstrate how academics will contribute to the aims of their " lay" or
"community " partners. Increasingly, and not surprisingly, Canadian
researchers are seeking funding outside SSHRC. Funding may be obtained
through a variety of agencies such as government departments or ministries
and crown corporations as well as non-governmental organizations such as
credit unions or advocacy organizations. Ali these agencies demand that
their own policy priorities be reflected in the proposals if they are to be
successfully funded, which becomes problematic quite quickly. These agen
cies may pre-define key tapie areas for research. They may pose direct
questions for academics to answer. They may accept sorne methodologies,
reject sorne, and appropriate still others. My research examined the social
lives of women living in forestry-based towns on the west coast of British
Columbia ( B C ) . Sorne of these were on Vancouver Island; one was located
in Squamish ( near Vancouver ) . My focus was aimed squarely at those
women who continued to support industrial forestry in light of substantial
challenges to the industry and communities - challenges from economic
restructuring, environmental activism and recognition of the rights of
Aboriginal First Nations. 1 secured funding from Forest Renewal BC
( FRBC ) , a newly created crown corporation in British Columbia whose
primary obj ectives were to improve the well-being of BC's forests, forest
industry, and forestry communities. To obtain funding, 1 had to demon
strate how my study would improve the well-being of forestry communities
overa!!. My initial propasa! was accepted, pending my agreement to revise
its obj ectives according to the demands of a single reviewer. This reviewer
requested that 1 expand the group of women beyond " protesters " to include
a sample of women from a broader political and economic base. Thus, my
compromise was to carry on with my own interests, and " append" those
of the reviewer, in arder to satisfy the granting agency. But it didn't stop
there: 1 had to do this every time 1 made a report about the project (1 made
fourteen ( ! ) in total), hampering my abilities to stay true to my own
research interests and questions.
The funding from FRBC also raised the expectations and hackles of
residents from forestry communities themselves. The provincial government
told residents that monies from this corporation would be used to support
local development of forest resources and communities . They were hopeful
about research but also wary - concerned that funding for research would
S U C C E S S A N D FAI L U R E I N F E M I N I ST R E S EARC H 1 41
supersede their own needs for assistance during times of massive economic
restructuring. Although FRBC administered two separate programs - a
research program and a land management program (e.g. funding activities
such as tree planting and watershed restoration ) - in the minds of many
community residents, the objectives of the separate programs were blurred
by their pressing concerns about the survival of local livelihood, community
and culture within a re-forming forestry economy.
Notwithstanding these limits, there were sorne important benefits of
going this route. The research grant from FRBC was about three times
larger than what 1 could have secured through SSHRC. This funding,
therefore, was like receiving gold coins from heaven. It enhanced my own
status within the department and university. As Demeritt (2000) points
out, the amount of grant funding is an increasingly important currency in
measuring the value of an academic. My relatively large grant greatly
increased my average income to the department and university. While large
grants are valued, few individual feminist research projects can claim such
advantage. More importantly, the three-year award allowed me to pay
generous honoraria for women to take part in each workshop and to
conduct interviews . Thus, 1 provided " fair wages" for women to work on
the project, so that they would value their own contributions and know
that 1 did so as well. In addition, 1 was the first person at the university to
officially reimburse non-university women researchers for child-care
expenses incurred while they were occupied in the research project. In my
mind, these were small, but important successes. They were part of my
contribution to redistribute the wealth provided to me through this grant.
J udging the Resu lt: Expand i ng Assessment Criterla and Critics
A movement into the realm of public policy research also expands the
networks of relevant actors who judge the research effort - from the point
of application, through its implementation, and ultimately upon its com
pletion . For example, usually only the most obscure research proposals
funded by the government get cited in the newspaper each year in public
jests about academic irrelevance. In contrast, the explicit pu blic policy
orientation of the FRBC proj ect expanded the range of interests, relevant
cr iteria, and potential critics pertinent to assessing its methods and results.
This research was set within a policy environment where forestry was a
majar provincial industry undergoing economic restructuring and govern
ment agencies were looking for research with policy relevance to help make
governmental decisions. For sorne community research participants,
accountability and research relevance meant the power of the academic to
generare positive change in their lives. Yet at the same time, expectations
and prospects for failure were undeservedly high. This was brought home
to me when 1 listened to one of the transcripts involving the trained women
researchers:
Participant: Is that what's going to happen with this [research . . . that is,
to be put on a shelf and ignored] ? . . . l'm j ust curious.
Interviewer: 1 think Maureen has a personal interest, not a vested interest,
but a personal interest in the results. 1 believe, from meeting her, that she has
a real interest in this sort of thing and she has an incredible amount of
valuable knowledge and 1 do believe that she's got, in her position as being
professor at [The University of British Columbia] , she's probably got a high,
a tremendous amount of respect too . . . It's been my experience that people
who are in educational institutions have credibility and knowledge and
knowledge is power, so, you know. Hopefully, and as 1 say, she <loes have a
personal interest in it, from the heart, not from . . . (interrupted).
Participant: Perfect, that'll b e good.
Here, the interviewer appears to ha ve a much inflated view of my power to

change policy. She translates my " concern " into a measure of success. Yet,
from the perspective of the most important criterion of this public policy
context - jobs - the project was an utter failure: no jobs were created! In
another interview from Vancouver Island, " Betty " remarked:
And [another friend] was saying, well, ask why they're doing it too, because
she thought it was ali a bit peculiar that this was going on, and for so long,
and money going to this [research] when it's, it's been cut for the men
working who could maybe use the money . . . 1 guess, we j ust have trouble, a
lot of trouble with, 1 guess, government spending and what money will go to
and what it doesn't go to. lt j ust doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes.
This quote dovetails with Brenda's assessment from Squamish that 1

highlighted at the beginning of the paper. Both continue to haunt me. They
haunt me not because 1 intended to generate or supplant job opportunities
from the research, but rather, because this public expectation permeated
the project despite my assertions to the contrary. This expectation was
entirely reasonable because the agency that funded the research had also
made such a strong commitment to job creation. The fact that the research
program was separate from other programs of FRBC was not relevant to
those living in the communities. If 1 ignored this point, 1 only highlighted
my difference and my distance from my research subjects - that of a
detached, urban, privileged, useless, yet employed, academic. If 1 embraced
it, 1 set myself up for failure. My research simply did not create jobs.
Perhaps, indeed, Betty was right.
S U C C E S S A N D F A I L U R E I N F E M I N I ST R E S E A R C H 1 43
A Fem l n l st Scholarly Context
In keeping with other feminist scholars, 1 acknowledge that the power to

define the parameters and to impose measures of success are not mine
alone. Presumably the granting agency can use the reports and findings in
ways that 1 had not intended. 1 have not monitored the follow-up of ali the
reporting requirements ( meeting the requirements was draining enough ) .
lmportantly, for this essay, the research subjects themselves can shape the
criteria for success, apply them, and announce them in unexpected ways.
Just before final reports were made public, Brenda was elected as a
municipal councilor. While 1 was aware of Brenda's skepticism from the
outset of the project, 1 did not predict her political aspirations. Her election
as a local politician gave her a platform and a public legitimacy that she
did not have before. While 1 could argue that her involvement in the
research helped to hone sorne necessary political skills and community
insights to improve her own election prospects, these arguments sound like
griping. She certainly did not attribute any part of her success to any
enhanced training or information she received through the project. 1
discovered her comments in the local Squamish paper sorne time after they
were made. She had not mentioned her involvement in the research. 1 was
certainly in an unequal position to debate her position. Nor would it have
been appropriate to contradict her.
This acceptance of others' power within the research process is consist
ent with the observations of feminist scholars who point out that research
ers are situated subjects who only have partial knowledge and power to
inscribe the research agenda. Rose ( 1 997) described the power relations
between researched and researcher as fluid marked by fragmented under
standings, uncertainty, and risk throughout research and dissemination
practices. She suggested that " the research process is dangerous . . . [where]
the risks of research are impossible to know" ( Rose, 1 997, p. 3 1 7) . 1 could
not have known, nor even anticipated, that Brenda would turn against me
publicly.
In contrast to Rose's more negative assessment, Demeritt (2000 ) argued
that as identities of and relations among researchers, partners, and publics
are changing, the processes of " trust building, mutual understanding, and
social learning involved in doing research can be as important for partici
pants as the substantive results" ( Demeritt, 2000, p. 326 ) . 1 agree that these
intangible effects are often discounted. The fact that my concern was felt
suggests sorne measure of success, at least on Vancouver Island. The
invitation to be the keynote speaker at an inaugural celebration of " Women
of lnfluence " on northern Vancouver Island suggests that during my
research, 1 attained sorne leve! of local trust and support. Yet, 1 am acutely
a ware that mu t u a l u nder sta nding <loes not feed a family. And when
research <loes no t feed a fa mily in a public policy context where communi
ties believe rhey are threatened by actual or imminent ( nutritional or
political ) starvation, processes of trust-building erode. So, too, erodes the
perceived public value of the research proj ect.
Not a Concl usion
While I have focused on a single proj ect and funding agency here, I use this
example because I believe it has wider application. Academics are now
encouraged by university administration to go to non-conventional funding
sources that may have strings attached to public policy objectives. Even
conventional sources such as SSHRC have new requirements for researchers
to express their relevance to society. Feminist scholars, who try to uncover
and undo real-world inequities, and who have focused scholarly attention
to power relations should be at the core of debates about funding. These
arrangements shape ali aspects of a research project - from its initial
conceptualization of the "problem " at hand, through the choice of meth
ods, analytical strategies, and interpretation of results. Importantly, in the
latter categories, our successes will be determined in very public and
uncontrolled arenas of policy debates and study locations. More fundamen
tally, these arenas shape the basic premises of the research itself. Sometimes
they do so overtly, such as in pre-establishing questions for research
programs. Sometimes these arenas shape research more subtly through
ongoing renegotiations of the research proj ect through its various stages.
As feminist scholars, we need to discuss the implications of this emergent
research context fully and openly among ourselves, policy makers, and
research subjects.
S U C C E S S A N D F A I L U R E I N F E M I N I ST R E S E A R C H 1 45
RESEARCH TIP
P re - i nterv i ew Preparat i o n
• Do you r ho mework, e.g. review contact m aterial , review pu rpose

of material, review relevant/appropriate documents.
• Do a practice interview .
• Arrange for interpretation or translation, if necessary.
• Confirm appointment time and place.
• Prepare interview bag.
• Make sure you know where you are going.
• Leave interview destination and details with a friend or a
colleague.
• Take time to collect your thoughts just before the appointment.
• Don't arrive in a rush.
• Be prepared for the unexpected!
8
Doing Feminist Fieldwork about

Geograph y Fieldwork
Karen Nairn
I am a geographer who has chosen other geographers - geography students

and geography teachers/lecturers - as the subject/obj ect of my research. I
investigated the social conditions of the reproduction of geographic knowl
edge in the context of residential fieldtrips. Fieldtrips are defined as trips
away from an educational site and may be one hour or one day long.
Residential fieldtrips involve students staying away at least one night. The
teaching and learning of fieldwork practice is a significant aspect of the
reproduction of geographic knowledge because many geographers claim it
distinguishes geography as a discipline ( see far example Stoddart, 1 9 8 6 ) .
Although other geographers critique geographers' preoccupation with par
ticular styles of fieldwork ( see far example Berg, 1 994; Nairn, 1 99 8 ) , the
residential fieldtrip is one farum through which the practice of fieldwork is
intensively taught.
In my recently completed doctoral dissertation (Nairn, 1 99 8 ) , I dem
onstrate how particular farms of collective masculinity domínate the social
environment of university residential fieldtrips. A critica! analysis of how
fieldtrip cultures are part of generating particular farms of geographic
knowledge also provides an opportunity far engaging a feminist method
ology that could " be a farm of resistance to dominant ways of acquiring
and codifying knowledge" ( Nagar, 1 997, p. 203 ) . In arder to undertake
a feminist analysis of the reproduction of geographic knowledge in the
context of residential fieldtrips, I collected data based on a feminist prin
cipie that a different gendered " reality" is possible. I focused " on the
changeable, marginal, deviant aspects - anything not integrated which
might suggest fermentation, resistance, protest, alternatives - ali the
'facts' unfit to fit" ( Gebhardt, 1 9 78, p. 405 ) . Madge et al. ( 1 997, p. 90 )
argue that feminist methodologies are distinguished by their "challenge
to research orthodoxy " and identify four characteristics of these method-
F E M I N I S T F I E L D W O R K A B O U T G E O G RA P H Y F I E L DW O R K 1 47
ologies - ways of knowing, ways of asking, ways of interpreting, and

ways of writing. In this chapter, 1 draw on my dissertation research and
recount what 1 found as significant in ways of asking and ways of
interpreting.
The Pol ltics of The Field
My stated feminist theoretical and methodological concerns sparked the

politics of the field, and in turn the field shaped my theoretical and
methodological directions. Theory and practice, knowledge and politics are
interconnected because " knowledge and its production [is] always already
[a] political process" ( Gibson-Graham, 1 994, p. 2 1 4; emphasis in original ) .
Fieldtrips and fieldwork, the " heart" o f what ( academic ) geographers do
(Head of Geography Department, fieldnotes, October 1 9, 1 994 ) , were not
considered a legitimate doctoral topic at one university in Aotearoa/New
Zealand. For example, one academic geographer who responded to the
initial doctoral propasa! asked " Is it geography ? Why geography ? Why not
education ? . . . certainly not the sort of research usually done in geography "
(fieldnotes, November 2 3 , 1 994; see also Kobayashi and Peake, 1 994,
p. 239, and McDowell, 1 992a for further discussion ) . My position as
student, combined with my positions as woman, feminist, and ex-high
school teacher, cast me as someone without the authority to ask questions
about and carry out research on the teaching practices of academics .
McDowell ( 1 992b, p. 5 9 ) points out the dilemma 1 was facing - " it is
difficult to simultaneously be seeking validation from and critiquing the
academy. "
From a list of possible questions, 1 distilled one key research question:
How are the embodied disciplinary identities of geography student/geogra
pher socially constructed and reproduced through the culture of residential
fieldtrips in Aotearoa/New Zealand in the 1 990s? In other words, how do
geography students learn to be geographers and to do geography? The
term "embodied disciplinary identities " specified both the bodily and the
disciplinary as two key dimensions of residential geography fieldtrips for
scrutiny. Such concerns intersect with feminist interests with embodiment
and identity ( see for example Davis, 1 997; Grosz and Probyn , 1 995;
Longhurst, 1 995 ) . At the time 1 formulated the topic there was no sustained
critique of geography residential fieldtrip education in Aotearoa/New
Zealand.
The study included seven residential geography fieldtrips ( ranging from
two to seven days) of two high schools and two universities located in
Aotearoa/New Zealand ( Nairn, 1 99 8 ) . 1 focus more attention on the three
residential fieldtrips of two universities because the university is a key site
1 48 KA R E N N A I R N
o f knowledge ( re ) production via teaching and research. The culture of

universities is one where academics are usually the researchers, not the
researched, and the disciplinary culture of geography is one where geogra
phers are used to observing other places and people, not themselves and
their education practices.
lt was also important that the research move beyond critica! inquiry to
a reconsideration of what could be different if geography fieldtrips were
not so central to the geography discipline and/or were conducted in
alternative ways. 1 argue for a new metaphor for fieldwork . What would
fieldwork knowledge be like if reconsideration, rather than discovery/
exploration which has long been the metaphor of enlightenment ( Myerson
and Rydin, 1 99 6 ) , was adopted as an underlying principie for fieldwork ?
The metaphor of discovery is caught up in the privileging of " seeing the
real world. " The metaphor of reconsideration enables the basis on which
knowledge is claimed, and the structures of that knowledge, to be
interrogated.
Ways of Askl ng, or Data Co l ledl o n
" Every method has its shortcomings " ( Gilbert, 1 9 94, p. 9 5 ) , so 1 used
multiple qualitative methods of data collection to compensare for sorne of
the shortcomings of each of the respective methods ( Denzin, 1 978; D .
Rose, 1 993 ) . The u s e of multiple methods also increased the likelihood of
uncovering any " facts" unfit to fit. 1 chose each method of data collection
for its appropriateness to the respective phases of the research process, in
particular to the leve! of empathy that could realistically be expected at key
points, as well as to the material conditions (classroom, lecture theatre or
fieldtrip location ) of each stage of the research. Far example, the beginnings
of trust and empathy from the participant observation phase (where 1 lived
and worked with participants ) facilitated the interview phase, when 1
expected to collect more in-depth data from selected participants.
There were four different data collection phases. 1 designed a pre
fieldtrip exercise, which included a drawing task, to record students'
expectations of the upcoming fieldtrip. 1 used participant observation
during the fieldtrips. At the end of each fieldtrip 1 asked students to
complete a written evaluation of the fieldtrip. Sorne months after the end
of the fieldtrip, 1 conducted in-depth interviews with selected fieldtrip
participants. Thus ways of asking included drawing, writing, listening,
observing and participating in fieldtrips. In the process of arguing for a
more diverse repertoire of ways for geographic knowing, 1 wanted to
mirror such theoretical contentions in the methodology. Or, put more
prosaically, 1 wanted to practice what 1 preached.
F E M I N I ST F I E L D W O R K A B O U T G E O G RA P H Y F I E L DW O R K 1 49
As part of engaging in reconsideration, in this chapter 1 pay attention to

how each of the methods offered the potential for alternative ways of
asking within a disciplinary paradigm patterned by ways of asking that
privilege text, seeing for yourself, and forms of disembodiment. And
threaded through the discussion is critica! reflexivity ( or reconsideration)
that is a hallmark of feminist research ( see Bernstein, 1 992; Lather, 1 99 1 ;
McDowell, 1 992a ; Rose, 1 997) . Reflexivity enables assessment o f research
theory and practice, of what does and does not work so that adj ustments
can be made to ways of asking (and/or ways of interpreting ) . Rose ( 1 997)
cautions against reflexivity as a new feminist orthodoxy but in the process
of being reflexive about reflexivity, she implicitly demonstrates the import
ance of ongoing vigilance about the politics of research.
1 chose both drawing and writing media to provide students with more
than one way in which to express themselves. 1 was interested in " key
words, concepts and images, as well as apparently disj unctive free associa
tions" ( Okely, 1 996, p. 40) and the drawing method fulfilled my goal of
facilitating spontaneous associations with the idea of fieldtrips. The draw
ings also signalled important theoretical issues. There were drawings of
body parts, whole bodies and predominantly stick bodies that sent me off
on important theoretical tangents. This way of asking provided one alterna
tive to the privileging of written text but engendered challenges for ways of
interpreting that 1 describe in the next section on data analysis.
Participant observation is a method that " delve [s] beneath the surfaces
of observed phenomena in order to seek the meanings and intentions which
produce it" ( Evans, 1 9 8 8 , p. 1 99 ) . By participating in social phenomena
we observe, we are more likely to learn the underlying meanings which
produce that phenomena ( Evans, 1 9 8 8 ) . 1 wanted to do more than observe
for three reasons. First, 1 was already critica! of geographers' over-reliance
on observation and appearances as a measure of reality and/or truth ( Cloke
et al., 1 99 1 ; Rose, 1 992 ) . Second, the appearance of a social phenomenon
does not in and of itself provide an explanation of that phenomenon.
Participation offers another point of access to the meaning of that particu
lar phenomenon (although it does not guarantee access and/or understand
ing ) . Third, "the fact of participation, of being part of a collective contract"
( Evans, 1 9 8 8 , p. 209) is an appropriate method for investigating the nature
of the collective contraer. A fieldtrip is a relatively unique collective contraer
in which participants live with people they have previously sat alongside in
a lecture theatre: " they're people that you don't know, 1 normally wouldn't
choose them to go away on a holiday with, or whatever" ( interview with a

m ale student after a university fieldtrip, September 1 5 , 1 995 ) . Participation
enabled me to "come across" the terms of belonging to a collective of
geography students. The terms of belonging included many elements, for
example, dress ( shorts or jeans and polar fleece j ackets ) , drink ( beer rather
1 50 KAREN NAIRN
than wine ) , physica l ability (walking long distances ) and social ability
( staying up late in spite of early starts the next day ) .
Participan t observation enabled m e t o access embodied forms of know
i ng more readily than any other form of data collection. Participation
alongside students in the material conditions of each fieldtrip provided
access to embodied knowledge such as the taste of fieldtrip food, the
temperature and comfort of sleeping accommodation, the physical demands
of long days and the social demands of relating to large numbers of fieldtrip
participants. This meant that 1 collected data about my own as well as
about other participants' embodied experiences. These data 1 often gleaned
from comments 1 overheard at mealtimes, during fieldwork activities, and
in the bunkrooms that 1 shared with students and staff. It was important
to include myself as subject of data rather than collect data solely about
the " obj ect" of research because 1 was conscious of feminist critiques of
disembodied researchers who are absent from their research. Although
participant observation offered the most potential for embodied forms of
knowing via a greater sensory repertoire and for countering the privileging
of the visual via the participation component, it also felt the most intrusive.
As a researcher who lived and worked with the subjects of my research
1 had access to the privare dimensions of ( sorne ) fieldtrip participants' lives.
Could 1 ( or should 1) stop being a researcher in sorne contexts ? Where
would 1 or should 1 draw the boundary between the information that they
consciously told me as a researcher and the information that they might
( inadvertently) provide during a casual conversation in a social/informal
context ? At times, it was hard to go to bed during fieldtrips, knowing that
1 could miss out on research opportunities. 1 was interested in the socializ
ing aspects of geography residential fieldtrips, yet it seemed at odds to be
working (researching) during the social activities of fieldtrips. 1 developed
the art of making a can of beer last a long time so that 1 would have an
appropriate prop in a social situation on a university fieldtrip, and con
tinued my work. 1 felt like 1 was exploiting social situations for work
purposes.
This sense of exploitation was complex. 1 was representing research
subjects who held more power as well as those who " held " similar or less
power than myself. 1 aim therefore to " not make public information or
strategies that may compromise the less powerfu l " ( McDowell, 1 992b,
p. 408; see also England, 1 994; Katz, 1 994) but 1 do not apply this same
criteria to those in positions of power. This point requires further qualifi
cation. 1 do not name those in power but information about the practices
and strategies of those who exercise disciplinary power are included in
written products because the purpose of my research was to explicare the
disciplinary culture of geography fieldtrips, a culture shaped by those with
the power to do so.
F E M I N I S T F I E L D WO R K A B O U T G E O G R A P H Y F I E L DW O R K 1 51
1 nevertheless sought ways to minimize the effects of my presence on

fieldtrips in the stated role of researcher. 1 made cursory fieldnotes as
unobtrusively as possible about my observations and conversations because
1 did not want participants to think that 1 was taking notes about their
every word or movement. At other times it was appropriate to ask, and 1
did ask, far permission to write clown a summary of a particular
conversation.
My selection of potential participants far later interviews was based on
what 1 had noticed about individual participants during the participant
observation phase. 1 interviewed students who appeared to be excluded
from and/or alienated by the fieldtrip culture. Although 1 interviewed more
students who felt alienated, 1 also interviewed students who did not
experience fieldtrip culture as exclusive and/or alienating. Confirming and
disconfirming cases were important in a proj ect informed by an ethos of
reconsideration of the construction of geographic knowledge and research
knowledge.
1 handed out post-fieldtrip evaluation forros at the end of fieldtrips or
back at the educational institution when the class met far the first time
after the fieldtrip had taken place. The questions paralleled the kinds of
questions that 1 planned to ask the interviewees and also included an open
ended question, inviting any kind of comments students might have about
their experience of the fieldtrip so that the students could include material
that might not have "fit" the other questions. This method offered the
advantage of a relatively prívate and anonymous form of communication
in which 1 rnight find out if there were other students who felt alienated by
the fieldtrip that 1 had not already noticed. This served as a checkpoint so
that 1 did not base decisions about interviewees solely on observation and/
or overheard comments but also sought students' own written perspectives
as an additional source of knowledge.
In a context where students were the ones ostensibly learning how to
think like and act like geographers during residential fieldtrips, it was
important to ask students about their experiences and memories. 1 left the
interviews as late as possible within the same academic year as the fieldtrip
and asked what students remembered based on a notion that mernories
might be a distillation of their most memorable fieldtrip experiences.
"When [students] are acknowledged as experts on their own learning, they
articulare very well the connections between life experiences [and] practice
. . . conversation uncovers knowledge which may not be evident within
other paradigms or structural frames " ( Collay, 1 9 89, p. 1 9 ) . 1 was con
cerned with what seemed real to each of the students and staff members
that 1 interviewed, rather than with proving what was real ( i f indeed it was
possible to do so ) . 1 assumed that the interview participants were telling
the " truth " about their experiences " insofar as they understood and
1 52 KAREN NAIRN
remembered the events. There was n o reason for them t o lie, although for
various reasons, certain information may have been deliberately left out"
(Middleton, 1 9 8 5 , p. 1 6 2 ) . This approach is an explicit challenge to forms
of knowledge that assume reality can be proved because it is observed and/
or there are a large number of instances. In addition, it constructs learners
as experts and memories as a significant source of knowledge.
I conducted two types of interviews as part of the study. The first type
comprised post-fieldtrip interviews in which I interviewed participants from
the seven fieldtrips sorne months after the fieldtrips had taken place. The
second type included interviews with key informants, people who were not
directly connected with the seven fieldtrips, because I also wanted to work
at the peripheries of the research tapie, to talk " to people no longer actively
involved [in fieldtrips] , to dissidents and renegades and eccentrics" ( Miles
and Huberman, 1 994, p. 3 4 ) . I asked particular individuals for an interview
because they were prepared to comment on politically sensitive issues
(Miles and Huberman, 1 994 ) . For example, I interviewed individuals about
issues such as the significance of fieldtrips for funding geography as a
science in the university context, performances of " alternative " masculini
ties and femininities, and controversia! decisions related to fieldtrip organ
ization. As Miles and Huberman ( 1 994) point out, there are benefits of
peripheral sampling in a research project concerned with contradictions
and alternative ways of collecting and analyzing data .
I offered research participants the opportunity to be interviewed one-to
one, in pairs, or in small groups of three, four or five. I included the small
group (a type of focus group) approach to interviewing because I was
interested in the group dynamics of the residential fieldtrip. I was concerned
with the interactions between participants as well as with what was said
because people's knowledge and attitudes are not entirely encapsulated in
reasoned responses to direct questions. Everyday forms of communication
such as anecdotes, jokes or loase word association may tell us as much, if
not more, about what people " know. " In this sense focus groups " 'reach
parts that other methods cannot reach' - revealing dimensions of under
standing that often remained untapped by the more one-to-one interview
or questionnaire " ( Kitzinger, 1 994, p. 1 0 9 ) .
The interview is a n arena o f performance - overt a n d covert - the small
group interviews emphasized these aspects of the interview as individual
participants performed for their peer group. At times, it seemed that these
interviews were not being taken as seriously as the one-to-one or pair
interviews were, although (1 reasoned ) the joking culture of the small group
interviews was recognizable as the j oking culture of the fieldtrips, recorded
in my fieldnotes. In other words, the forms of communication of the small
group interview mirrorred the forms of communication that I had wit
nessed on fieldtrips. Ironically, despite my stated interest in other ways of
knowing, transcribing and analysis of " irrational " forms of data such as
laughter and joking was more difficult. 1 subsequently favoured interviews
with one or two participants because they generated more manageable
( " rational " ) data. Indeed, the academic ritual of research depends on
rational rather than irrational data ( see Kobayashi and Peake, 1 994 ) .
1 discovered, however, that interviewing pairs was not always successful.
For example, 1 suggested a pair interview to two female university students
who agreed and the interview wenr ahead. One of the students left for
another commitment j u st before the interview ended. The other student
remained on for what turned out to be another quite different interview
during which she said things that she would not have said in front of any
other student. Similarly, a male student whom 1 interviewed one-to-one,
also acknowledged that he would not have talked about his friendships
with male students if he had been interviewed with one of those friends (if
that friend/participant had turned up as planned ) . In other words, pair
interviews offered the potential to explore the interactions between partici
pants but could also be constraining in terms of what participants felt able
to say. 1 utilized both approaches ( one-to-one and pair) to interviewing,
knowing that there were different advantages to be gained from both
methods.
Ways of asking were therefore informed by feminist theories and meth
odologies concerned with how to examine and represent diversity and
dilemmas in research. Such a multi-method qualitative approach premised
on reconsideration, represents an important challenge to positivist (geog
raphy) research practices premised on exploration and discovery.
Ways of l nterpreti ng, or Data Analys is
In this section, 1 outline my analytical methods, my ways of interpreting.

Data analysis was theory-driven : " Choices of informants, episodes, and
interactions [were] being driven by a conceptual question, not by a concern
for 'representativeness' " (Miles and Huberman, 1 994, p. 2 9 ) .
Students', teachers/lecturers', a n d researcher's perspectives of residential
geography fieldtrips are compared. This is called data triangulation and is
one strategy for improving the validity of research findings by exploring
what independent data sources " say" about a particular social phenom
enon . There are three possible outcomes of triangulation: convergence,
inconsistency, and contradiction (Mathison, 1 98 8 ) . Convergence of data
sources was satisfying because it showed where one or more students, one
or more teachers/lecturers, and the researcher independently shared a
similar perception of a particular social phenomenon. This improved the
validity of the research findings. Nevertheless, the inconsistencies and
1 54 KAREN NAIRN
contradictions between information from different data sources were j ust

as important because they directed my attention to what had gone
unnoticed or had been perceived differently by students, staff, and the
researcher. Inconsistencies and contradictions between information from
different data sources can push researchers to reformulate previously taken
for-granted understandings and potentially extend explanation of social
phenomena. In a feminist project contesting the reproduction of (geo
graphic) knowledge, such provision for analysis and inclusion of contradic
tory evidence is important.
Retrospectively I knew I had more data than I needed about high school
fieldtrips. This over-compensation was in part due to the politics of the
field. I found it much easier to gain entry to high school fieldtrips and later
to interviews with high school students, than I did to university fieldtrips
and interviews with university staff and students. My concerns about
having enough data were also predicated on a theoretical goal of remaining
open to unexpected as well as expected themes. I reasoned that taking
notes about what seemed irrelevant at the time could prove to be relevant
to emerging and/or unexpected themes in later fieldtrips. Determining how
much data are needed in advance ( rather than retrospectively) might be
achieved by maintaining data analysis concurrent with collection. An
ongoing assessment is then possible of which research questions have
enough data available so that selected forms of verification, such as
triangulation, are meaningful. And in a parallel fashion, it is possible to
identify the gaps in data which mean that specific research questions cannot
be meaningfully answered until more data is collected.
These suggestions imply a straightforward pragmatic approach that
belies the politics of conducting feminist qualitative research. The chal
lenges to the legitimacy of the topic referred to at the beginning of the
chapter remained with me throughout the project. I therefore collected
more data because I myself was inculcated in disciplinary forms of data
collection informed by positivist and quantitative paradigms where more
data symbolized more proof. More proof, although illusory and debatable,
was seductive because I wanted my feminist research to be taken seriously
by colleagues. In hindsight, I realize that no matter how large the quantity
of data, the legitimacy of feminist research will continue to be challenged
because it contests the very basis of knowledge claims .
In my analyses of the diverse and large quantity of data collected during
this research, I primarily utilized qualitative methods but employed quanti
tative methods to summarize, support and/or test the findings that I arrived
at via qualitative approaches. I discuss my analysis of the drawings as one
example of how I utilized three ways of interpreting the drawings rather
than rely on one approach. First, a quantitative approach in which I
counted activities and environments then tried different classification sys-
F E M I N I ST F I E L D WO R K A B O U T G E O G R A P H Y F I E L DW O R K 1 55
Figure 8.1 Female student's d rawi ng of what she expects to do on a field tri p
JVctc.� '-- "J e,¡e"\CA.'ir<._�

Draw what you think geography student(s) do on a fieldtri p . . .
� Ío� .shre.J -
ovl:f 1o5 � l,J- � """ \ --.._._ I /
/O �
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tems such as formal, informal (or both ) for activities, and indoors, outdoors
(or both ) for environments to test general ideas about students' expecta
tions of particular environments and activities on a forthcoming fieldtrip.
Second, a poststructuralist analysis in which I examined the implicit
binaries represented in the drawings such as outdoors/indoors, night/day,
student/staff, and work/fun. I then analyzed particular drawings where
such binaries were implicit and explicit, to find out if such " readings "
supported emerging themes or not, and selected exemplary drawings. In
the case of one drawing this binary was explicit; the page was divided
cl early between night-time and day-time activities ( see figure 8 . 1 ) .
The third mode o f analysis was t o consider the drawings a s representing
"an embodied social world" (Du Plessis and Fougere, 1 995, p. 1 32 ) .
Drawings in particular relied o n the use o f "objects imbued with symbolic
significance " (Du Plessis and Fougere, 1 995, p. 1 32 ) such as " the mortar
board" to indicate status, " the tree " to indicate the outdoors, " the beer
can " to indicate social activities, to tell a larger story (a picture is worth a
thousand words ! ) . I had asked students to draw pictures to undermine the
1 56 KAREN NAIRN
privileging o f words i n the academic arena ( see Monk, 1 99 7 ) . l t was ironic

that 1 re-presented these drawings in the words of analysis. ( Perhaps 1
should have been drawing conclusionary pictures ? ) 1 countered the re
presentation of drawings in words by including as many drawings as
possible in my dissertation for the reader to "add" their analysis to mine.
But this goal was confounded by the " quality" of sorne drawings, that is,
those drawings of a quality easily scanned were more likely to be included
in the dissertation .
The analysis of data generated during participant observation and the
post-fieldtrip interviews involved additional analytical strategies, namely
the writing of theoretical, methodological and analytical memos ( see Gla
ser, 1 978 ) , and the organization of data around emerging themes . "A
memo can be a sentence, a paragraph or a few pages. lt <loes not matter as
long as it exhausts the analyst's momentary ideation based on data with
perhaps a little conceptual elaboration " ( Glaser, 1 9 78, p. 8 4 ) . "I wrote the
memos for myself and they tie [ d] together different pieces of data in to a
recognizable cluster, often to show that those data [were] instances of a
general concept. Memos can also go well beyond codes and their relation
ships to any aspect of the study - personal, methodological, and substan
tive. They are one of the most useful and powerful sense-making tools at
hand" (Miles and Huberman, 1 994, p. 72 ) .
My theoretical memos included comments about emerging themes,
contradictions, and notes on new ideas that might explain puzzling data
( Miles and Huberman, 1 994 ) . My methodological memos included notes
about changing methods of data collection and " doubts about the quality
of sorne of the data," and " ethical dilemmas" (Miles and Huberman, 1 994,
p. 6 6 ) . Analytical memos included preliminary summaries of data, even
preliminary conclusions that acted as place-holding analyses requiring
further data, as well as "cross-allusions to material in another part of the
data set, " and " elaboration or clarification of a prior incident or event that
seem [ed] of possible significance " (Miles and Huberman, 1 994, p. 6 6 ) .
During data collection and analysis, four recurring themes emerged: ( 1 )
the difference between the place ( s ) visited on geography fieldtrips and the
place ( s ) where geography students live and attend their place of education;
( 2 ) the significance of the fieldtrip as an opportunity for going out in the
" real" world and " seeing" for yourself; ( 3 ) the experiences of living and
working together on a residential fieldtrip; and ( 4 ) the " re-creation " of
geographers during fieldtrips.
1 created separare files around each of these four themes. 1 will explain
how 1 did this in relation to the second theme, the significance of the
fieldtrip as an opportunity for going out in the " real " world and seeing for
yourself, as an exemplar of my approach. 1 did a keyword search of ali the
summarized transcripts for words such as " real " and " see, " and placed ali
of the relevant sections of text with associated details such as name of

student and fieldtrip, into separate files for each of the four institutions. I
then read ali four files, highlighting key quotes, writing marginal notes,
cross-referencing, and continuing the process of writing memos. Marginal
notes were an important way of recording " new interpretations, leads,
connections with other parts of the data, and they usually pointed towards
questions and issues to look into . . . and to ways of elaborating these
ideas " (Miles and Huberman, 1 994, p. 6 7 ) .
Far each theme, I searched for inconsistencies a n d contradictions i n four
ways. First, I purposefully re-read the files generated around each theme
for inconsistencies and contradictions. Second, I did further keyword
searches for contradictory words. Far example, 1 searched for words
indicating senses other than seeing ( hearing, tasting, touching, smelling) , in
particular for the words - " hands-on " - in the case of the second theme.
Third, I searched for metaphor and analogy ( Bogdan and Biklen, 1 992)
which often revealed inconsistencies and contradictions in the privileging
of particular terms in geographical discourses. Far example, I searched
specifically for instances where the word seeing was deployed metaphori
cally but did not make sense literally. Fourth, I identified and analyzed
binaries because contradictions and inconsistencies were often inherent in
particular binaries. In the case of the second theme, I returned to the
sections of text under the headings of " real world/textbook " and " theory/
practice " in the summarized transcripts because these binaries were evident
in much of the participants' talk about going out to see the " real " world. 1
even engaged in extended discussions about these binaries (without naming
them as such ) with sorne interviewees, in response to their claims about the
effectiveness of fieldtrip learning compared to classroom or lecture theater
learning. Evans ( 1 9 8 8 , p. 2 1 4 ) also describes how he tried out emerging
theories and hypotheses during conversations within the research situation.
1 then analyzed these extended discussions closely for congruencies, incon
sistencies and contradictions. The final act of analysis was the process of
writing itself.
The analytic induction of categories, themes and relationships; the
explication of meaning; and the understanding of action may ali proceed
via the writing itself . . . The "writing up" of the qualitative study is not
merely a maj ar and lengthy task; it is intrinsic to the " analysis," the
"th eory, " and the " findings " (Atkinson, 1 99 1 , p. 1 64; emphasis in
orig inal ) .
1 58 KAREN NAIRN
Reco n slderations, or D raw l ng Concl uslons
To conclude is to reconsider. In line with my stated goals of challenging

the construction and reproduction of geographic knowledge, drawing
conclusions is a forro of reconsideration and re-interrogation. In writing
conclusions, it is "of course, always a positing, and hence excludes and
demarks, thus always itself open to the possi bility of deconstructive tech
nique " (Young, 1 990, p. 32 1 ) . At the end of a proj ect in which I was
critica! of certainty in (geographic ) knowledge claims, it was difficult to
write conclusions with any finality or certainty.
To critique and to deconstruct is a well-traversed academic path . Ways
of asking and ways of interpreting described in this chapter are primarily
deconstructive. But it is not enough to simply deconstruct and to destabilize
( see Young, 1 990 ) . Any research informed by a feminist notion that a
different gendered " reality" is possible requires more than this. The exist
ence of instabilities in the binary logic of sexual difference has no necessary
effect on the politics of sexual difference ( Sedgwick, 1 990 ) . A further step
must be taken if feminist or gay or anti-racist struggles are to benefit. In
other words, " sorne kind of social practice must lean on these instabilities
if they are to represent any kind of transformative possibility " (Waldby,
1 995, p. 274; emphasis added).
In feminist poststructuralist analysis, one term implies its opposite.
Within the findings that emerged from deconstructive ways of asking and
interpreting, alternative social and epistemological ways of conducting
fieldwork and fieldtrips were implied/suggested. For example, a deconstruc
tion of the privileging of the visual simultaneously models how the basis of
knowledge claims can be challenged and suggests other forros of knowing
because the visual is called into question.
Multi-method data collection and analysis informed by feminist politics
is a means of " acquiring and codifying knowledge " ( Nagar, 1 9 97, p. 203 )
that goes " against the grain " of dominant masculinist ways of (geographic)
knowing. But it is not a simple matter of pitting feminist against masculinist
ways of knowing. The (re)production of feminist knowledge must also be
subjected to critica! reconsideration. A multi-method approach increases
the likelihood that contradictory ( feminist and masculinist) knowledge
claims might surface and be more thoroughly investigated.
I utilize the moments in which I make summaries of my research findings
to argue for strategic interventions in the social and epistemological prac
tices of residential fieldtrips that lean on the instabilities and tensions
exposed theoretically and methodologically. To " re-construct," or in the
terms of this project, to posit alternative geography fieldtrip practices, is
risky because it entails a misunderstanding of these alternatives as prescrip-
F E M I N I S T F I E L D W O R K A B O U T G E O G RA P H Y F I E L DW O R K 1 59
tive and/or as answers to ali the identified issues. In spite of these risks, it
is important to move beyond critical analysis to reconsideration of what
could be different if geography fieldtrips were not so central to the
geography discipline and/or were conducted in unconventional ways. In
turn, such interventions and alternatives must be continually subjected to
critical re-evaluation ( see Alton-Lee and Densem, 1 992 ) . Theoretical and
methodological maneuvers need to affect social and epistemological prac
tices, and be critically reconsidered, if the feminist project of disrupting
masculinist forms of knowledge is to benefit women and men.
Iwould like to thank the editor of this collection, Pamela Moss, and colleague
Ruth Liepins for their encouragement and helpful comments on earlier drafts.
RESEARCH TI P
What to Put i n Yo u r l nte rv i ew Bag
• Tape recorder
• Tapes/back-up tapes
• Batteries
• Pens
• Elastic bands
• Tissues
• Pertinent information, e . g . address, phone number, map with
directions
• Business card or equivalent
• Brief , jargon-free written project description
• Letter of informed consent
• Documentation of ethics approval
• lnterview guide
• Research journal
• Phone numbers for counseling (if appropriate)
• Gift (if appropriate)
9
Quantitative Methods and Feminist

Geograph ic Research
Mei-Po Kwan
l ntrod udi o n : Quantltatlve Geograph l cal Methods
Quantitative methods not only involve the use of numbers such as official
statistics . They include the entire process in which data are collected,
assembled, turned into numbers (coded ) , and analyzed using mathematical
or statistical means. In research relying mainly on quantitative methods,
the focus of the data collection effort is to gather quantitative data or
qualitative information that can be quantified in sorne way ( as in attitudinal
studies ) . Once coded, these data are then explored using various methods,
ranging from simple measures such as frequency counts and percentages,
to complex techniques such as log-linear models. Results of quantitative
analysis can be presented in the form of summary statistics, test statistics,
statistical tables, and graphs. They can also be represented in complex
cartographic or three-dimensional forms with the assistance of GIS, or
Geographical Information Systems.
Since spatial data violate many assumptions of conventional statistical
methods, such as independence of each individual observation and constant
variance, quantitative analysis of geographic data calls for spatial statistical
methods that were developed to overcome the problems of applying
conventional statistical methods to geographic data . This is a specialized
collection of techniques required when dealing with data that describe the
spatial distribution of social or economic phenomena, many of which are
of interest to feminist geographers. Without applying the appropriate
geostatistical methods, analysis of geographical data may lead to erroneous
results and conclusions. There are other new developments in quantitative
geographical methods which are particularly relevant to feminist research.
The recent development of local statistics facilitates the analysis of the
relationships between the local context and women's everyday experiences.
Q U A N T I TAT I V E M E T H O D S 1 61
Recent use of GIS-based geocomputational and geovisualization methods

represents another area with potential for feminist research ( Kwan, 2000a ) .
Quantitative methods have been used in feminist geographic research
since the early days of feminist geography. The original intention was to
produce a more accurate and less " biased " description of the world by
studying the world through women's perspectives and experiences ( Moss,
1 995a ) . Recent debate in feminist methodology provides helpful insights
for the use of quantitative methods in feminist research ( Mattingly and
Falconer Al-Hindi, 1 99 5 ) . As a feminist geographer, it is important to
understand the limitations and value of quantitative methods, when quan
titative methods are appropriate, and how to approach using them. In this
chapter, 1 examine critica! issues concerning the use of quantitative methods
in feminist geographic research and illustrate sorne of the steps for under
taking quantitative feminist research using my recent work as an example.
Fem l n l st Critiq ues of Q uantitatlve Methods
Quantitative geographical methods were developed during a period now

commonly called the " quantitative revolution " in geography. These meth
ods were developed with the intention of making geography a scientific
discipline not unlike physics, where the validity of the knowledge was
justified according to positivist principies. With a positivist epistemology,
the purpose of geographic research was to seek universally applicable
generalizations. The researcher was considered a detached observer capable
of acquiring objective knowledge of the world through discovering empiri
cal regularity in social, economic or spatial phenomena.
Early feminist geographic research emerged to show the neglect of
women's experiences and to include women as subj ects in geographic
research using largely quantitative methods ( McDowell, 1 99 3 a ) . As ques
tions about women were added to geographical inquiry using methods
similar to quantitative geography, early feminist geographic research was
considered positivist and empiricist because it was based upon the prin
cipies of scientific objectivity, value neutrality, and the search for univer
sally applicable generalizations. Feminist geographers who did these kinds
of studies, as feminist critics argued, intended to make geography a better
" science " through correcting male bias and using more stringent scientific
methods. Their work was considered empiricist as they privileged claims to
knowledge based primarily upon observable " facts. " Feminist critics also
asserted that " truths" put forth as universally applicable are valid only for
men of a particular culture, class, or race (WGSG, 1 99 7 ) . They are also
critica! of the tendency to derive analyses of universal causality from
inferential statistics.
1 62 M E l - P O KWAN
Quantitative methods were criticized by feminists far other reasons. For

instance, since quantitative methods depend on sorne quantifiable attributes
of the phenomena under study, they are not capable of reflecting the
complexity and richness of women 's lives. This is a serious limitation since
a substantial portian of women 's experiences cannot be expressed by
numbers and is therefore not quantifiable. Further, the " live connections "
with research subjects are often lost through the use of quantitative data,
making it difficult to tell women's feelings and their interactions with
others. This in turn makes it difficult to obtain a contextualized and holistic
understanding of the complex processes involved in determining their
everyday experiences. Quantitative data and methods are therefore " dis
embodied " - as abstracted and decontextualized information is used in the
process (WGSG, 1 99 7 ) .
Feminists also criticized the assignment o f a n y specific individual's
experience into hard-and-fast categories in the collection and analysis of
quantitative data, whether these categories are predefined by the researcher
or according to official criteria (Jayaratne and Stewart, 1 99 1 ) . The rigid
nature of the categories and variables used may fail to reflect the com
plexities of women's lived experiences. Very different phenomena may be
lumped together in the statistics as if they were the same thing and the
statistics may have a problematic connection with the life they claim to
represent ( Pugh, 1 990 ) . Further, since pre-existing categories and official
statistics were often based on male experiences, using them in feminist
research can be self-defeating. They may actually make it difficult, if not
impossible, to revea! the processes underlying the inequality and oppression
women experience ( see far example Perrons, 1 99 9 ) . For instance, official
statistics were often found to be unreliable and even useless far studying
women's labor force participation or contribution to the economy because
many forms of women's unpaid work are omitted in official definitions of
" work " ( Samarasinghe, 1 99 7 ) . Another example is Pugh's ( 1 990, p. 1 07)
study on homelessness, where she concluded that " life will always be more
complex and ambiguous than any possible usable system of coding and
classification. "
Approach ing Quantitative Methods as a Fem i n i st Geograp her
Epistemological considerations
So, how do feminist geographers go about using quantitative methods in

their research ? The first thing is to identify alternative, critica! practices of
quantitative methods that can, at least to a certain extent, address the
concerns of feminist critics. Insights from recent debate in feminist meth-
odology are particularly helpful here. One is that using numbers and
quantitative methods is not the same as holding what sort of knowledge is
valid or privileging certain kinds of knowledge over the others ( Lawson,
1 995; McLafferty, 1 995 ) . The association between quantitative methods
and positivist/empiricist geographic research was more historical than
necessary or unchangeable. Feminist geographers need to move beyond the
kind of scientific objectivity and value-neutrality that characterize quanti
tative geography of earlier periods.
As feminists now hold, the kind of scientific objectivity that is based
upon the existence of a detached, transcendent observer is not only
unachievable but masculinist ( G. Rose, 1 99 3 ) . Feminist obj ectivity should
be understood in terms of the situated knowledges based on particular
" standpoints " or limited " positions " of women 's lived experiences in
particular social and geographical contexts ( Haraway, 1 99 1 ; Harding,
1 99 1 ) . Further, the use of quantitative methods by itself <loes not confer
the researcher any authority to make privileged knowledge claims as
compared to other forms of knowledge, especially those obtained through
qualitative methods. Rather, it helps to situare other forms of knowledge
in the context of the overarching social and economic relations ( Moss,
1 995a ) . Feminist geographers using quantitative methods should limit their
conclusions rather than making grand claims about the universal applica
bility of their results ( Rose, 1 99 7 ) .
Beyond the qualitativelquantitative dualism
Another important point is that criticisms of quantitative methods, as a

reaction to positivism and empiricism, can lead to an unuseful oppositional
stance that holds qualitative methods as the preferable alternative to
quantitative methods ( Harding, 1 9 8 7a ) . This, however, not only perpetu
ares dualist thinking through holding a qualitative/quantitative dualism
that characterizes masculinist thinking, but also ignores the possibility of
postpositivist, critica! quantitative methods that are consistent with feminist
epistemologies and politics ( Lawson, 1 995; Sheppard, 200 1 ; Sprague and
Zimmerman, 1 9 8 9 ) . lt is perhaps more helpful to think of quantitative
methods as one of many possible feminist methods that can be used
together with other methods. As the analysis of quantitative data can be
complemented by a contextualized understanding of women's everyday
liv es provided by qualitative data, and the interpretation of qualitative data
can be assisted by the broad picture provided by quantitative methods,
using multiple methods in a single study may provide a more complete
understanding of the questions at hand. This strategy of " triangulation "
has advantage because the weaknesses o f each single method may be
1 64 M E l - P O KWA N
compensated by the counter-balancing strengths of another ( D . Rose,

1 99 3 ) .
In the practice o f feminist research, i t i s important to recognize the
limitations and strengths of quantitative methods. Quantitative methods
simply cannot provide the kind of rich and contextualized account of
women's experiences that qualitative methods can permit (Jayarante and
Stewart, 1 99 1 ). They are therefore more suitable for answering certain
questions and are less appropriate for addressing others. Feminist
researchers need to determine the appropriateness of quantitative methods
and their combined use with other methods for a given research question.
lt is also important to identify the research question based on critica!
feminist concerns and/or feminist theories befare deciding which method( s )
one will use in a particular study. The primary issue is what data are
needed and which methods are appropriate for addressing the research
question.
Data problems
There are other concerns for the practice of quantitative methods in

feminist geographic research. Quantitative data can come from secondary
data sources, such as official statistics. They can also come from primary
data collection through surveys. Since the counting procedures or classifi
cation schemes used to collect official data often ignore significant aspects
of women's lives and experiences (e.g. counting women's work and male
violence against women ) , the collection of primary quantitative data is a
better strategy than the reliance on official statistics for many issues of
interest to feminist geographers. A good example is a study discussed in
Reinharz ( 1 992, p. 82) by two law students who collected data from a
j udge and police chiefs to show the prevalence of wife battering in the local
area .
Another issue is that great care is needed when developing a coding
scheme because rigid categorization is a major weakness of quantitative
methods . For example, social differentiation should be defined by using
many dimensions, such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality. The
use of more refined coding schemes for classifying individuals into social
groups would yield better understanding of significant differences between
individuals than one based upon any single criterion such as gender. The
use of advanced categorical data analysis techniques that can consider
severa! differentiating dimensions at the same time is also preferable to
those that are based on a single dimension at a time. Further, presentation
of quantitative data should be accompanied by a description of the
ambiguity or problems of the classification scheme. Any reservations about
the results because of this should also be provided. An evaluation of the

sensitivity of the results to different classification schemes will be even more
helpful to the audience.
Measurement issues and statistical analysis
Another important issue in quantitative methods concerns the quantifica

tion process and the analysis of quantitative data. Befare quantitative data
can be collected, concepts central to the research question need to be
operationalized. This means that the researcher has to determine how
various phenomena are to be measured and how the required data are to
be collected. Turning concepts such as " class" or " discrimination " into
quantifiable measures is far from straightfarward. Feminist geographers
therefare need to deal with ali operational issues with care. For example,
how should one measure women's " household responsibility " ? One com
monly used measure is the number of children in the household, which is
unlikely to be a good measure because it may not have a consistent
relationship with the amount and type of domestic tasks women perfarm.
As conventional geographical concepts and existing quantitative meas
ures may contain serious male bias, the question about the gender sensi
tivity of these concepts or measures is also important. lt is important far
feminist geographers to critically re-assess ali existing measures and look
far any such bias befare using them. It may be necessary to develop one's
own method of counting or measurement far the research question ( see far
example Kwan, 1 999b ) .
l t is important to note that sorne feminists argued against the use of
inferential statistics in feminist research, where only non-parametric and
descriptive statistics are considered appropriate. Feminist geographers
therefare also need to understand the concepts of statistical inference and
significance, and to situare these techniques in the context of feminist
epistemologies. Although ali statistical inferences, including non-parametric
statistics, assume sorne notion of " typicality" in circumscribed populations,
using inferential statistics does not necessarily mean making totalizing
generalizations or asserting universal causality ( Pratt, 1 9 8 9 ) . Inferential
st atistics are based upan our understanding of the likelihood of occurrence
of certain events. They can provide a basis to determine whether the
phenomena observed is typical or not far the population subgroups being
studied (without arguing that the relationship observed is also true far the
larger population ) . If there are wide variations in what individuals experi
e nced in a sample, it is difficult to argue that it is shared by members of the
group. If differences among various subgroups of individuals are statisti
cally significant, such differences are unlikely to be caused by chance alone
and therefore deserve a closer look. Inferential statistics can therefore be

used in feminist research in a non-generalizing, non-totalizing manner.
The Place of Quantitative Methods in Fem l n i st Geograp h i c Research
Since the strengths of quantitative methods are in describing and analyzing

complex patterns of social, economic and geographical phenomena of
interest to feminist geographers, they can be used for certain purposes.
First, quantitative methods are useful for describing the measurable aspects
of women's everyday experiences and analyzing complex spatial relations
among geographical phenomena. They are particularly helpful for provid
ing a broad " picture " of the social, spatial or temporal inequalities women
experienced at various spatial scales. As McLafferty ( 1 995, p. 43 8 ) argued,
quantitative methods can revea) " the broad contours of difference and
similarity that vary not only with gender but also with race, ethnicity, class
and place. " Quantitative methods are therefore especially valuable when
there is an urgent need to have a broad " view" of women's current
situations (e.g. male violence against women ) , but detailed individual-leve)
data are not readily available or the limited resources at hand prevent the
collection of qualitative data . They also help to highlight the shared
experiences of many similarly situated women such as domestic violence
and sexual discrimination ( Moss, 1 995a ) .
A good example i s the research b y McLafferty a n d Preston ( 1 992) which
used aggregate census data to analyze the complex relationships among
gender, race, ethnicity, occupational status and commuting distance. Their
studies showed that the well-known gender differences in the length of the
commute trip varied considerably among race and ethnic groups. Although
the categories employed in their quantitative analysis, like gender or
ethnicity, can be questioned, and the data they used did not give a
contextualized understanding of the lives of the people they studied, their
research indicated that quantitative methods can still be used to describe
and analyze the similarities and differences among groups of women at
different times and places.
Another way in which quantitative methods are useful in feminist
geography is that the presentation of quantitative data or results of
quantitative analysis is often more forceful in political discourse than the
use of qualitative data. This is especially true as " hard" data obtained
using quantitative techniques often appear to be more convincing to public
policy makers. Surveys may have the power to change public opinion in
ways that a limited number of in-depth interviews may not. For instance,
Seager and Olson ( 1 9 8 6 ) documented the extent to which women were
unequal and subordinare to men throughout the world using official
statistics. They concluded that women everywhere are worse off than men
- they have less autonomy, less power, less money, but more work and
responsibility. Severa! studies had already shown that women in general
have more spatially restricted lives than men - they work closer to home
and travel less - and are often employed in female-dominated occupations
and earn less than men ( see for example Tivers, 1 9 8 5 ; Hanson and Pratt,
1 995 ) . As Lawson ( 1 995 ) argued, descriptive data like these powerfully
present the unequal power and gender relations within the household and
the economy at large. In describing certain measurable aspects of women's
lives, descriptive data revea! the social and political processes that help to
perpetuate the inequality and oppression of women .
In light of this, quantitative data and methods may be a powerful
instrument for initiating progressive social and political change. They may
help reduce the marginalization or oppression of women . For example,
using a large survey data set, Rosenbloom and Burns ( 1 994 ) documented
that working mothers rely heavily on the car to balance their domestic and
child-care obligations. Travel demand management measures that aim at
reducing travel without taking their needs into account will have consider
able negative impacts on their lives. This result can be used to steer public
policies to better meet the need of working mothers. Another example,
cited in Jayarante ( 1 9 8 3 ) , is the court decision of a sex discrimination
lawsuit that began to make statistics acceptable as legal evidence.
Closely related to this is that the analysis of quantitative data may
stimulate questions about the process of oppression or gender relations that
generate the numbers. This may help revea! research areas that urgently
require attention and indicate directions for more in-depth and qualitatively
oriented research. For example, in a study by Tempalski and McLafferty
(reported in McLafferty, 1 99 5 ) , quantitative analysis helped identify the
lower-middle income neighborhoods in New York City where the problem
of low birthweight is serious. With these results, healthcare and social work
professionals can undertake in-depth qualitative research in these areas to
obtain a better understanding of the problem. Quantitative methods can
also be used to revea! and challenge the male bias in existing geographical
concepts and methods. For example, in my research on conventional
measures of accessibility, 1 found that ali conventional accessibility meas
u res failed to take women's needs to undertake multipurpose trips and
their space-time constraints into account and therefore suffered from a
serious male bias. This led me to formulare and implement space-time
measures of individual accessibility that can better reflect women's individ
ual access to urban opportunities ( Kwan, 1 99 8 , 1 999b ) .
An Example: Gender, Work and Space-T l me Con stral nts
The example described below is from my recent research on the complex

relationships between women's commuting distance, employment status,
and space-time constraints . Detailed theoretical arguments, methods, and
results are elaborated in separare publications ( Kwan, 1 999a, 1 999b,
2000 b ) . The project was built upan earlier studies that include many
excellent examples of using quantitative methods in feminist geographic
research ( see far example England, 1 99 3 ; Hanson and Pratt, 1 990, 1 995;
Johnston-Anumonwo, 1 99 5 , 1 997; McLafferty and Prestan, 1 992, 1 996,
1 99 7 ) .
Research questíon
1 formulated my research question in light of two recent trends. First, as

more and more women participate in the labor force, sorne of them have
been able to achieve relatively high occupational status and income.
Second, as the proportion of women who can use their own automobile to
commute increases, many women now have much better spatial mobility
than befare. Many believe that these two trends together will lead to
changes in the allocation of domestic responsibilities within the household
(at least far those women who have achieved high occupational status and
spatial mobility ) . If this is true, it also means that men will take up a large
proportion of household responsibilities. These changes in the domestic
division of labor in turn will hopefully be associated with changes in the
gender relations within the household. My study attempted to find out
whether these trends actually lead to changes in the allocation of household
responsibilities. 1 also sought to examine whether the constraints associated
with women's need to perform domestic responsibilities are still important
in determining their employment status and commuting distance.
The concepts used in the study are based upan earlier research on the
geographies of women' s everyday lives using time-geographic concepts ( see
far example Tivers, 1 9 8 5 ) . The time-geographic concept most relevant to
feminist research is " space-time constraints , " which impact upan women's
daily lives in significant ways and stem from two main sources. First is the
limited time available far a person to perform various activities within a
particular day - commonly referred to as time budget constraint. The
second source, referred to as fixity constraint, arises from the fact that
activities that need to be performed at fixed location or time (e.g. child
care drop-off ) restrict what a person can do far the rest of the day.
Past studies observed that space-time constraints significantly affect
women's job location, occupational status, and act1v1ty patterns. One

limitation of this literature is that none of these studies attempted to
measure fixity constraint directly and assess the extent to which it impacts
upon women's employment status and commuting distance. My research
attempted to address this limitation through collecting quantitative data
about the spatial and temporal characteristics of individuals' activities and
analyzing their relationships with women's household responsibilities, job
location and employment status.
Formulation of operational measures
Befare setting out to collect the data, 1 had to resolve operational issues
about how to turn the notion of space-time constraints into something
measurable. Based upon previous work on this area, 1 decided to solicit
information about the space-time fixity of each activity a person performed
through an activity-travel diary survey. The diary recorded details of ali
activities and trips made by the respondent in two designated travel days. 1
included four specially designed questions in the diary to obtain infor
mation about the spatial and temporal fixity of each activity ( see Kwan,
2000b ) . Using answers to these four questions, 1 designated three types of
fixity: (a) spatially fixed activities; (b) temporally fixed activities; and ( c )
activities which are both spatially a n d temporally fixed.
Another operational issue involved identifying the purpose of each
activity performed by the respondent. A common approach in past studies
comprised categorizing activity purposes and then coding the written
description by the responden t. One majar difficulty of this approach is that
the primary purpose of an activity may not be reflected from the written
description of the activity given by the respondent. For example, an activity
can be performed for differenf purposes by the same person ( e.g. grocery
shopping may be undertaken for meeting household need or for social or
recreational purposes ) , and the same activity may be performed for differ
ent purposes by different individuals. To overcome this problem, 1 included
a question in the activity diary to record the primary and secondary
purpose of an activity according to the respondent's subjective evaluation.
Five activity purposes were initially provided to the respondent as guide
li nes, but they can also provide their own answers in an open-ended
q uestion.
Data collection
After resolving operational issues, 1 developed the survey instrument. lt

includes two main parts: a household questionnaire and a two-day activity
travel diary. Using this survey instrument, 1 collected data from a sample
of adults (over eighteen years of age) in households with one or more
employed member ( s ) in Franklin County, Ohio, in 1 995. The household
questionnaire collected information about the socioeconomic characteristics
and transport resources of ali household members. The two-day activity
travel diary collected detailed information about the activities and trips of
the respondent for two designated days. Data collected included street
address, travel mode used, car availability, routes taken, the primary
purpose of each activity, a subj ective fixity rating for each activity, and
other individuals present when performing each activity.
Because the small number of ethnic minorities in the sample does not
allow for meaningful statistical analysis, they were excluded from the
analysis (this would not have been the case if qualitative information had
been collected). The final subsample consists of three groups of European
Americans (white ) : twenty-eight full-time employed female, thirteen part
time employed female (who work less than thirty-five hours a week), and
thirty-one full-time employed male.
Analysis and results
1 analyzed the differences in fixity constraint experienced by individuals of

these three groups using simple descriptive statistics and analysis of vari
ance (Kwan, 2000b ) . The results show that women employed part-time
encounter more fixed activities in their daily lives than the other two
groups. Many of these fixed activities are associated with household needs
that have a strong restrictive effect on the locations of their out-of-home
activities and job location . Further, despite the fact that women employed
full-time travel longer to work than men, they experience higher leve) of
fixity constraint than men. This result is surprising considering the high
occupational status and high level of access to prívate cars of the full-time
employment women in the subsample.
The results of a canonical correlation analysis 1 performed revea) that,
for individuals in the subsample, the level of day-time fixity constraint
depends more on one's gender and the extent to which household respon
sibilities are shared with other adults in the household, than on sorne
conventional variables of household responsibilities such as the presenc e or
number of children in the household ( Kwan, 1 999a ) . To analyze th e
complex interrelations among women's day-time fixity constraint, non

employment activities, household responsibilities and employment status, 1
estimated a nonrecursive structural equation model with latent variables
for the women in the subsample (Kwan, 1 999a ) . The results show that
fixity constraint has a significant impact on women's employment status
(where women with higher levels of fixity constraint are more likely to
work part-time ) .
Overall, these findings suggest that, women i n the subsample face higher
levels of fixity constraint than men in the su bsample, regardless of the
length of their commute trips and their employment status. The experiences
of these women therefore allow us to question the belief that increasing
female participation in the labor force will lead to significant change in
women's gender role and space-time constraints. The results also suggest
that the situation of women may not change much without first changing
the gender relations and redressing the division of domestic labor within
the household. Despite the belief that recent trends in the increasing number
of women with higher occupational status and improvement in their access
to privare means of transportation will lead to changes in traditional gender
roles, the results of my study call in to question su ch a belief.
Presentation of results
There are severa! qualifications applicable to these results. First, given the
specific subsample and context of the study, its results cannot be general
ized to other gender/ethnic subgroups or sociospatial contexts. For instance,
given the high socioeconomic status and travel mobility of the individuals
in the subsample, the results may seriously understate the fixity constraint
and mobility problems faced by individuals of other gender/ethnic sub
groups ( especially minority women ) . Further, the survey data used in the
study do not allow for the examination of other important factors such as
labor market processes and the negotiation between the female and male
heads of household. The interaction between these factors and women's
space-time constraint is an important issue for future research. In view of
these limitations, 1 realized that complementing the results with ethno
graphic data of the individuals could have led to a better understanding of
th e complex processes involves ( for example, women's fear of violent crime
may impose significant space-time constraint on their activity patterns ) .
U s i ng Quantitative Methods as a Fem i n l st Geographer
My study focused on an important aspect of women 's everyday lives that

also partly reflects gender relations within the household. 1 developed and
used measures which 1 considered more appropriate and more capable of
reflecting the complexities of women's daily lives. 1 collected individual
level data from a sample instead of using secondary data, thus avoiding the
many omissions one may encounter when using government surveys. 1 used
advanced statistical techniques to analyze the complex interrelations among
women's domestic responsibilities, occupational status and space-time
constraints . In the study, 1 also developed GIS-based computational and
geovisualization methods for exploring the data without first reducing the
original data to statistical aggregates, thus retaining the particularities of
each individual subj ect. To make the interpretation of the results less
disembodied, 1 also talked to sorne of the subjects to clarify issues over the
phone, which gave many insights into how to represent these details in the
data.
Given that one purpose of feminist geography is to improve our under
standing of the gendered nature of social life and to provide knowledge
useful to the struggle for gender equality, quantitative methods can play a
role in feminist geographic research. When using these methods as a
feminist geographer, special attention has to be paid to epistemological
issues. In addition, as misuses of quantitative methods can lead to errone
ous and misleading findings, it is important to understand the proper
procedures for undertaking quantitative geographical analysis and what
conclusions the data or method allow. This knowledge would also be useful
for a feminist geographer to identify the masculinist bias in existing
quantitative data and methods.
RESEARCH TIP
Computer S oftware
Computer software can assist with data management, coding, and

analysis. Take the time to make sure that the program you choose is
appropriate for your research needs.
• Data management programs, e.g. Excel, Lotus, QuattroPro,

Access.
• Quantitative Analysis Packages, e . g . SAS, SPSS, MiniTab, MYSTAT .
• Qualitative Analysis Packages, e . g . Ethnograph, N U * DI ST, Text
based Beta.
• New Generation lnteractive Qualitative Analysis Packages, e . g .
NVivo.
• Bibliographic Referencing Systems, e.g. EndNote, Reference
Maker .
There are competing reviews of software analysis packages. We found

Renata Tesch's ( 1 991 ) article useful .
10
Borderlands and Feminist Ethnograph y
]oan Marshall
The men on this island are living in a time warp from the fifties. (Thirty
seven year-old woman on Grand Manan Island, June, 1999 )
Four years ago, during the early stages of my research on Grand Manan,
someone described the women there as " the strong women of Grand
Manan. " This description continues to haunt me, even as my own under
standings and interpretations have evolved. These " strong" women are
both complex reflections and creators of a society that is historically rooted
in notions of community, family, and the core myth of rurality. Grand
Manan women are survivors whose identities are embedded in a long
history of rural isolation and resource dependence, and who they are
cannot be separated from their historical, geographical and econom1c
contexts.
In opting for a feminist ethnographic methodology as the means to
ensure the nuanced research that Chouinard ( 1 997) talks about that would
hopefully fill a gap in geographic research, I was guided by the belief that
an understanding of women's roles and relationships on Grand Manan
would be possible only by exploring their self-defined understandings,
meanings, and experiences. Their own words, stories, and self-described
patterns of behavior would be crucial to achieving my research objective,
that is, to understand the evolving processes of local-global interactions in
terms of impacts upon women and community. Yet in its intrinsically
personal interactive modus operandi and its philosophical underpinnings,
ethnography is more than a methodology. "The ethnographic stance is as
much an intellectual (and moral) positionality, a constructive and interpre
tive mode, as it is a bodily process in space and time " ( Ortner, 1 995 ,
p. 1 73 ) . Engaging feminist ethnography as a holistic process necessaril y
involves ambiguity and fluidity. The feeling of inhabiting borderlands
B O R D E R L A N D S A N D F E M I N I S T E T H N O G RA P H Y 1 75
throughout this research project has informed my approach, infusing

ethnographic research with a sense of living and working in unstable
worlds of meanings and perceptions. Using the idea of a borderland, rather
than boundary, underlines the fluidity and constantly negotiated realms of
being that describe the research process in community settings ( see Marcus,
1 99 8 ; Katz, 1 994 ) .
Three Borderlands I n Eth nograp h l c Research
At this historical moment and in ali the geographical sites of research, it is

crucial that social scientists inhabit a difficult and inherently unstable space
of betweenness in order to engage in rhetorical, empirical, and strategic
displacements that merge our scholarship with a clear politics that works
against the forces of oppression . (Katz, 1 9 94, p. 67)
For the community and for the researcher alike, Grand Manan is both a
nexus ( meeting place) and a borderland (unstable world of interpretation
and meaning) , existing between two cultures, informed by the past but
profoundly influenced by new technologies and the consumerism of
modernity. From the beginning of the project, it became clear that Donna
Haraway's "situated knowledges" ( 1 9 8 8 ) defined both methodology and
epistemology in ways that necessarily focused less on a sense of a concrete
" field" and more on interlocking, multiple sociopolitical sites and locations
(Gupta and Ferguson, 1 99 7 ) . As Haraway ( 1 9 8 8 , p. 590) points out,
" Situated knowledges are about communities, not about individuals. The
only way to find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular. "
Even in my initial choice of field sites, there was a sense of inhabiting a
borderland in my experience of both the familiar and the strange. Border
lands were embedded in my unquestioned assumptions of difference
because 1 felt that " the edges of society " engaged my interest "as challenges
to the apparently overwhelming homogenization and hegemony of Western
modernity " ( Nadel-Klein, 1 997, p. 9 7 ) . Three especially relevant border
lands permeated the entire research process for me: the common ethno
graphic issue of insider-outsider status, the presence or absence of a
feminist perspective in understanding gender relations, and the space
b etween research and action.
The dilemma of determining insider-outsider status has many dimen
sio ns of concern. As part of a borderland, it defines both the methodology
of the research process and the communication of the resulting meanings,
stories, and interpretations. The notion of insider-outsider relates, for
example, to spatial practice, insofar as researchers move " i n " and "out" of
their field sites. Ethnography is more than just " passing through " ; it
1 76 JOAN MARSHALL
demands commitment in time a n d spatial engagement that embodies " a

flexible range of activities, from co-residence t o various forros of collabo
ration and advocacy " ( Clifford, 1 997, p. 1 9 1 ). As 1 shall describe, the
underlying tension inhabiting the regions between researcher and friend,
knowing that visits are timed and that over the long term these relations
will evolve more securely toward one pole or the other, inevitably surfaces
in every encounter. Clifford's description of the field site as a " habitus "
characterized by " a cluster of embodied dispositions and practices " ( Clif
ford, 1 9 97, p. 1 99 ) is helpful in understanding the practice of feminist
ethnography as a dynamic project.
lntrinsic to the insider--outsider dilemma is the concept of positionality
as a perpetua) source of questioning and self-revelation (Dyck, 1 993 ) .
Although initially w e may see ourselves primarily a s researcher, other roles,
past experiences, and our own personal subj ectivities significantly define
how we conduct our research ( Robinson, 1 994 ) . Not only do past experi
ences such as advocate, volunteer, wife, mother, and church member,
impact upon how we position ourselves, but evolving aspects of position
ality with respect to friend and researcher, locals and visitors, continuously
affect how we participare in daily activities and respond to community
norms. In an earlier arride, 1 describe the central importance of the cleavage
between native islanders and residents " from away " in Grand Manan
social relations (Marshall, 1 99 9 ) , a cleavage that significantly impacted ali
aspects of my research. While being " from away " gave me particular access
that would have been denied an islander, as an outsider there were other
issues of confidentiality and ethical behavior that demanded explicit atten
tion. As Judith Stacey points out, " elements of fictionalization are intrinsic
to ethnographic storytelling" ( Stacey, 1 990, p. 3 6 ) . This fictionalized aspect
in the documentation becomes part of our ethical conduct. The very nature
of writing requires that restrictions be embedded in the process itself
( Hopkins, 1 993, p. 1 5 5 ) .
The second borderland infusing my study can b e described a s the
absence or presence of a feminist perspective in understanding gender
relations. While my original commitment had been to a feminist ethnogra
phy, it quickly became apparent that patriarchy is neither unitary nor self
contained, and it cannot be separated from evolving social structures. "An
understanding of gender inequality requires analyses both at the leve! of
social structure and at the leve) of the individua l" ( Fox, 1 9 8 8 , p. 1 6 3 ) . lt
was impossible to consider women's struggles in Grand Manan in isolation.
Feminism became not only an epistemology, but a strategy, a pragma tic
too) that was useful in sorne situations and not in others ( Frohlick, 1 999 ) .
Such a position "involves leaving aside a narrowly focused analysis of
'women' to ask questions about the 'other' side of gender" ( Frohlick, 1 999 ,
p. 299 ) . For the researcher, the sense of a borderland involving feminism,
and concomitantly gender relations, applies not only to defining terms of

reference for study, but also to the activities of everyday living.
One of the most striking dimensions of gender relations in Grand Manan
is the spatial context through which public and private spaces of interaction
reflect and control women's lives. For the outsider, there may be ambiguity
about " acceptable" spatial patterns of mobility and interaction, especially
as they relate to gender. Feminist ethnography forces the researcher to
confront questions about local normative practices. "The social construc
tion of gender difference establishes sorne spaces as women's and others as
men's" ( Blunt and Rose, 1 994, p. 3 ) , which , in the separation of public
and private spheres of action, is central to the feminist struggle ( Pateman,
1 9 8 9, p. 1 1 8 ) . Judith Stacey describes the importance of gender for her
research, pointing out that " Being a woman inhibited my access to, and
likely my empathy with, the complete range of male family experience "
(Stacey, 1 996, p. 2 6 ) . lt is an issue that I have been grappling with
throughout my research on the island, and no doubt will continue to do
so.
Tensions associated with the historical context of patriarchy and the
space between research and action constituted the third borderland I
inhabited within my research . The debates around feminism and the need
to move forward within the emancipatory project through which women
can be empowered have influenced my approach to research ( see Gottfried,
1 996; hooks, 1 9 84; Jaggar, 1 9 8 3 ) . Women interviewing women as a
research strategy is potentially activist because of the inherent role in
consciousness-raising ( Laws, 1 9 8 6 ) , bearing in mind that any attempt to
speak for someone else is fraught with dangers of presumption as well as
ethical and moral responsibilities of interpretations that accurately reflect
the voices of others. Indeed, Robinson ( 1 994 ) has argued that the authori
tative voice of the researcher must be muted, though not eradicated, in the
obj ective of eliciting meanings and interpretations of women's lives. The
dilemmas implied in a commitment to action intensify the burden of
" difference " rooted in lack of experiential understanding and shared
meanings. For a feminist ethnographer, a focus not only on but on behalf
of women carries significant political dimensions that molds the entire
research process. As researchers, we are challenged by the intensely per
sonal nature of ethnographic research that " places research subjects at
grave risk of manipulation " ( Stacey, 1 996, p. 9 0 ) .
B rlefly - T h e Settl ng
Since Grand Manan has a fragile environment it is important to minimize the

conflict of uses. ( Grand Manan Rural Plan, January, 1 999, p. 5 )
1 78 JOAN MARSHALL
An island community o f 2,600 people, Grand Manan i s in the Bay of

Fundy near the border between the state of Maine and the province of
New Brunswick, 90 minutes by ferry from the mainland. Dependent upon
a rich and diverse fishery that includes herring, groundfish, lobster, scallops,
sea urchins, and severa! smaller niches, the people of Grand Manan have a
strong sense of identity rooted in family lineage and their shared experience
of the sea. For two hundred years the women have looked after family and
community while husbands were at sea for weeks and even months at a
time. New technologies, especially related to aquaculture, changing mar
kets, degraded fish stocks, and government regulations have altered the
seasonal and daily rhythms of work activities for the men, with profound
effects on the women.
While herring continues to be canned as sardines in the automated fish
plants and more recently used as feed for the new aquaculture industry,
since 1 998 it has ceased to be smoked in the sheds that used to dominare
the island landscape. The loss of the smoked herring industry has meant
that the women have lost their traditional and most significant meeting
places around the fish tables. Unlike the fish factory where a time dock
restricts the flexibility of hours so important to young mothers, and where
a noisy assembly line limits social conversation, until 1 997 boning sheds
used to offer opportunities for sharing family tragedies, day-to-day victo
ries, and the many struggles that define life in a fishing community. While
the herring weirs continue as significant locations of community and social
networks for the men, the women no longer have their smoke sheds to
generate and nurture their interactive webs of significance. As 1 talk to the
women who will say, " But, we're nothing! '' , 1 see on the one hand an
hernie strength borne out of generations of survivalist strategies, and on
the other hand a disturbing sense of feeling completely powerless.
Experlencing Borderlands - Sorne Di lem mas in Doing

Fem l n i st Eth nography
Like an unintentional pregnancy, the fieldwork on which the book is based

seemed to happen to me and to determine its own path of growth. ( Stacey,
1 990, p. 27)
Entering the community and soliciting contacts
Entering the community was difficult. After an afternoon of wandering

around the wharves, buying a few groceries, and looking through pam
phlets at the business center, severa! impressions begin to stir up uneas y
feelings of self-doubt. Where were the women ? How can 1 make contact?
Even the language was strange. New words, rhythms, accents and syntax
on Grand Manan, combined with uneasiness in my limited knowledge of
the fishery, made me distinctly uncomfortable. 1 had difficulty even formu
lating a sensible question because 1 did not have the vocabulary to describe
the " hook " on the "weir" to which the " drop " was attached. 1 soon
learned to become self-mocking about my ignorance and ineptitude around
the fishery. Making j okes about my inabilities seemed to smooth over the
bumpiness of engaging in conversations on the wharves. For the most part,
this was a successful strategy that acknowledged both my outsider status
and my willingness to cede any perceived outsider " expertise" to their
male-centered knowledge. The men were always happy to answer questions
that incorporated both genuine curiosity and respect with a sense of their
male superiority. The borderlands of insider--outsider, feminist perspective,
and research versus action would ali come to the fore in situations that
implicitly questioned the naturalness of the patriarchal structures.
The ferry trip itself, I have discovered, is inevitably an invaluable entrée
through casual meetings in the lounge or on the deck. On one trip 1 sat
with a young couple who, under normal circumstances 1 might never have
had a specific reason to interview. For an hour 1 listened as he described
how he made his career choice as a fisheries officer, and how in his spare
time he scavenges for discarded metal obj ects that he separares and sells to
various recyclers. While 1 had met them briefly befare, and they knew
about my research, the opportunity for an informal exchange when 1
shared my own interests and heard about theirs allowed me to establish an
unsolicited relationship that might be helpful in the future. In a small
community, being known is not necessarily the problem; being accepted is.
Such contacts help to build a foundation of goodwill and to creare the
possibility of future sources of information and understanding.
Even informal conversations may not be adequate groundwork for the
more formal interview, especially in the early stages of the research. During
my first year, someone told me about a fisherman who was converting his
lobster boat, Spiritwind, for the summer season to take out tourists for
" deep sea fishing. " Wandering about the wharves, 1 noticed someone
working on the Spiritwind. We started to chat, and our casual conversation
led to an invitation to accompany him and his son the next day when they
went out to pull their traps. lt was a wonderful day, full of stories and
information about the island and its people. Severa! days later 1 phoned his
home, spoke to his wife, and asked if 1 might come over for an " interview"
about changes on the island. She greeted me at the door, and led me into
the living room, where 1 encountered a stiff backed, neatly combed man
sitting, looking extremely uncomfortable. No j okes that evening, no long
rambling stories; this was to be an " interview " ; both the fisherman and his
1 80 JOAN MARSHALL
wife, a teacher, were o n edge. B y the time I left a couple of hours later the
atmosphere was certainly more relaxed, but I was not happy with the
information I had been able to collect. Although phone calls to arrange
formal interviews are a useful introduction for sorne people, my experience
on Grand Manan has been that " dropping in," or asking to drop-in when
I happen to see them at church, for example, is far more likely to elicit a
rich source of information.
Meeting women
The fun or, depending upon your viewpoint, the frustration of ethno
graphic research is that it follows few rules. As Stacey ( 1 9 90, p. 27) points
out " serendipity in the process is a more common and valuable research
method than is often acknowledged. " Arriving on the island, I soon realized
that finding women to talk to would be more difficult than I had antici
pated. The casual meeting places for men were off-limits to women . For
the most part, the older women are at home or in the grocery stores or
churches. The younger women are either earning money outside the home,
or looking after children, only occasionally taking walks with baby car
riages. That there are no sidewalks, no central public parks or commons
for informal gatherings, and no leisure drop-in facilities for women has
significant implications for social relations on the island.
One strategy that proved effective with the younger women, which
seemed to encourage their willingness to meet with me, was to have group
discussions that were already part of their weekly schedule ( Davies, 1 99 9 ) .
" Ladies Night O u t " o r Bible study groups served as venues for my
inquiries. However, 1 soon learned that the apparent " efficiency" of these
gatherings held particular hazards. In one case, the group was evenly
divided between native islanders and those " from away " who had married
into the island. Questions about changes at the school, about the changing
nature of jobs available to women, and problems of youth, ali elicited
different sets of responses from each of the two groups. More importantly,
in later conversations I discovered that much was left unsaid because of
different perceptions, values, and concerns about island life that contained
implied negative criticism that would have further alienated the " from
aways" who struggle to be accepted. An " open " discussion it was not ! For
non-native islanders, there is an ever-present borderland of daily living that
is constantly being negotiated and represents a fragile reality of acceptance.
This borderland between insiders and outsiders on the island was further
illuminated in another group meeting that provided a contrasting interview
experience for me. In this very fruitful evening, four women in their early
forties, ali university-educated with teenage children, had arrived on the
B O R D E R L A N D S A N D F E M I N I ST E T H N O G RA P H Y 1 81
island twenty years earlier as new spouses of native islanders. Their lively
discussion over a period of three hours, revealed the depths of the insider
outsider cleavage in Grand Manan society, and, in particular, the difficult
ies faced by women who marry into the island culture. Group interviews
are different from individual meetings in that the number of variables that
can influence the nature and value of the information multiplies by the
number of women in the group! At the same time, it is important to take
into account the characteristics of the group that may or may not reflect
existing cleavages in the community.
Yet another group showed me the danger of unrecognized assumptions.
When 1 arranged to meet with a group of s i x native islanders, 1 assumed
they would reflect sorne common understandings and a leve! of trust that
would be helpful to me. 1 had not considered the, perhaps obvious,
possibility that these " common " understandings can be asserted as a
defensive wall, protecting island histories against the outsider. During
" Ladies Night Out, " we discussed issues such as women's roles in the
home, their experiences in new tourism opportunities, and changing expec
tations of teenagers. The hostess for one of the evenings, who appeared to
be lively, energetic, and even representative of the " strong women" of
Grand Manan, seemed relaxed and engaged with ali the questions 1 raised.
lt was only weeks later that 1 began to hear stories about the abuse she has
endured for many years at the hands of her husband. Unlike other
conversations and interviews 1 ha ve had with individual women, during the
entire evening there was no intimation of spousal abuse, despite the
apparently widespread public knowledge of her situation . This example
highlights the difficulties for the researcher of absorbing and adapting to
the pervasiveness of the insider--outsider cleavage.
Three different group situations; three different responses; each with a
different mix of people and perceptions focused on the intentions of the
outsider-researcher. While the group of women " from away " had less
invested in protecting island culture, and indeed seemed almost delighted
that their stories might be heard, for women caught up in systemic abuse
the group became a collective defense against the curious intruder. lt was,
in fact, the discovery of the underside of the " rural idyll" that was the
darkest moment for me. 1 felt that 1 had " lost my innocence " ! A comment
by Stacey ( 1 990, p. 2 72 ) echoes this feeling and more, when she describes
her "gradual loss of nalveté about the ethical character of ethnographic
re search methods, which 1 discovered to be far less benign or feminist than
1 had anticipated. "
1 82 JOAN MARSH A L L
Gendered responses
The borderlands of research activity in relation to actlVlsm were never

more apparent than when 1 was confronted by the temptation to go
beyond my "fieldwork as resistance " ( Nast, 1 994, p. 6 0 ) , and to become
a facilitator, and even an initiator, of resistance. During the third year of
research on the island, 1 began to explore with women the notion of
creating their own public space far casual, informal networking. In accept
ing the "artificiality of the distinctions drawn between research and poli
tics " ( Katz, 1 994, p. 6 7 ) , and feeling increasingly comfortable with the
degree of acceptance 1 seemed to be accorded, 1 failed to understand the
implications of my work far the researched community. Severa! stories
illuminate the borderland that existed far me as a tension between non
participatory "neutra l " recording, and the sense of urgency far women's
empowerment.
During an interview with a young woman, " Susan , " a school teacher
" from away" who had moved to the island a decade earlier and married
an island-born carpenter, Susan described her many concerns about raising
their children and about the problems of student discipline at the school.
While we talked, s he w a s feeding a youngster in a high chair in the kitchen,
and her husband sat listening in the adjacent living room. 1 asked her about
the opportunities far women to get together informally, and wondered
what she thought about the merits of sorne sort of indoor facility far
women. Her immediate response was: " They wouldn't have time. They're
tied to the home. " But, just as telling was her husband's intervention from
the next room: "Why would they want that ? ! " To this, Susan shot back,
" You can drive up the island anytime and stop at the garage far coffee.
Men don't have a commitment to stay at home. "
Then she continued, thinking out loud, as she responded to my query:
" There might be a need. But 1 don't know how much women would use it.
1 looked far a group when Philip was born. 1 tried to get a support group
going far new moms. But there wasn't much interest. Annette [the social
worker] tried, but it was in her office, at night. lt couldn't work, especially
at night when moms are tired. To see other women we have to call and
make an appointment ! " She remarked on a resource center she knew of on
the mainland that seemed to be successful, and wondered if islanders might
learn from their experience.
David ( still in the next room) : "Women always want to organize things .
The first thing they would do is schedule who would make coffee and
cookies each day. We j ust take our chances, and drop-in . "
Speaking between rooms, 1 asked when was the last time that a mal e
friend had dropped in at his house. David: " When Susan was away! " They
both laughed, knowing the truth of it even as they seemed somewhat

mollified to have to admit it. As the conversation continued, it was
apparent that David saw many obstacles to the success of any initiative for
a women's center. For Susan, the idea was enticing, but even as a woman
" from away" who might consider challenging the patriarchal constraints
of island culture, she noted that any such center would have to be " off the
road" so that " parked cars couldn't be seen . " " The women wouldn't want
people to know they were there. "
This conversation between Susan, David, and myself alludes to the
unspoken resistances to women's mobility, but, more significantly, my own
inappropriate and unacknowledged interference as an outsider. Further
more, 1 realized that there was also an issue of unintended consequences.
Not only did 1 begin to question the ethics of initiating and facilitating a
women's center, there was also a concern a bout my ability to continue the
research in the face of open hostility from significant sectors of the
community. A mainland social worker cautioned me about the dangers for
women who step out, in terms of abuse and violence at home. As the
identities of men engaged in the traditional fishery are being threatened by
declining fish stocks and disappearing markets, their insecurities play out
at home. If at the same time women are seen to be gaining freedom from
their traditional ties to the family, the situation may be exacerbated, with
women as the scapegoats - physically, emotionally, financially, and
psychologically.
While 1 have expressed my commitment to social action within the
community in other ways, the situation around women threatens a funda
mental normative structure. The idea of a women's meeting place would
challenge a prevailing cultural norm that creates distinctive public and
private spheres of men and women on the island. 1 drew back, and have
not again broached the tapie, except as it may come up during conver
sations about women's spaces and leisure activities. My deepening commit
ment to the well-being of the community that 1 see as directly related to
enhancing and expanding the life experience of women, makes the border
land between research and action extremely difficult terrain to negotiate.
Despite Porter's ( 1 995 ) strong arguments for positions of advocacy,
researchers must consider their ethical and moral responsibilities with
resp ect to unintended consequences and any presumption of a " right" to
interfere.
Gendered resistance
During many visits to the store for groceries, 1 would chat with a lively
young cashier. 1 knew a bit about her background, and one day asked for
1 84 JOAN MARSHALL
an interview. W e arranged t o meet the next day, mid-afternoon, when she

would be " doing the books " in the back office. The arrangement was
important, both for her feeling of privacy and for maintaining a sense of
informality about the interview. The impromptu nature of our meeting lent
a " normalcy " to the meeting that seemed to enhance the comfort leve! for
us both . That my vehicle would not be parked in her driveway, possibly
provoking questions from curious islanders, 1 also considered to be an
advantage, especially because she was known as being particularly out
spoken. Similarly, for the purposes of this narrative, the real identity of
Janet is carefully disguised by inconsequential details. Her strength of
character and reflective understanding of island values and structures
provided me with a rich and informative interview. Her unequivocal,
articulare comments about gender relations, and her stories illustrating the
problems for women, provided insightful and disturbing views of a society
caught in a " time warp. " Janet watched as 1 wrote, talking not warily but
with an awareness of both meanings and implications.
Describing an episode two years earlier, ar a time when she and her
sister, Laurie, were both involved in separation proceedings, she asked that
she not be quoted by name. Her story was one of resistance, of openly
challenging island patriarchal norms. Laurie had wanted to participate as
an " extra " in the filming of a Hollywood movie that summer, but her
husband would not allow it. Arguments ensued. His rationale was that the
children needed to be looked after, the family should come first, and he
could not do it since he would be off on the herring seiner. Despite his
" orders , " Janet and her mother offered to take over the babysitting so that
she would be able to join the film crew on the movie set for each night for
severa! weeks, which was what happened.
At the end of the shoot, a cast photo was taken, but Laurie was not
allowed to have the photo in the house. Her mother had it safely stored
until the separation was finalized months later. Story upan story during
the two-hour interview revealed the lives of the two sisters and their
mother, ali now divorced. Three exceptional women, they are defying
island norms and values, not only as defined by men but also as agreed to
by women. For as Janet acknowledged, patriarchy is not merely men's
oppression, but also involves women's acquiescence and complicity ( Ort
ner, 1 99 5 ) .
Sorne Reflectlons
The subj ectivities of both researcher and researched, then, are strongly
implicated in the constructions and representations produced in texts. ( Rob
inson, 1 994, p. 2 1 7)
Negotiating the borderlands of feminist ethnography is an ongoing chal

lenge both personally and for research . In various places throughout the
preceding discussion 1 have referred to issues around gaining access to
women's stories, confidentiality, ethical behaviour, and activism. In produc
ing texts, we are faced with problems of " fictionalization " ( Stacey, 1 990),
and " restrictions" (Hopkins, 1 9 9 3 ) , that challenge our own integrity and
moral sensitivity. With Robinson ( 1 994, p. 2 1 8 ) , 1 agree that we need to
speak with our subjects rather than to or far them, in a way that moves us
forward "in the context of seeking modes of research and representation
that disrupt - but do not suspend - the effects of positionality, the 'outside'
perspectives. " But her challenge is even more rigorous, when she calls for
the mediations and interpretations to be inscribed as the obj ect of investi
gation, rather than as the process in the investigation ( Robinson, 1 994,
p. 220 ) . There needs to be a displacement of the roles of researcher and
researched so that the privileged voice of the questioner is not eradicated,
but denied any space a priori.
In an early presentation of my findings, 1 showed my text to a long-time
resident " from away," who, while acknowledging the validity of my
emerging insights, also warned that islanders would not take kindly to a
reinterpretation of their " white-washed history. " As much as she had come
to !ove her new home, she was well aware of the deceptions integral to the
island myth of the rural idyll ( Little and Austin, 1 99 6 ) . Unambiguously,
she said to me: " Be careful. 1 don't want to see you vilified. " E ven as this
constant tension defines every stage of the process, " we cannot launder
everything" ( Hopkins, 1 99 3 , p. 1 2 6 ) . 1 have come to believe that there are
no easy solutions.
For the feminist ethnographer who must negotiate the borderlands
between the rural idyll and its darker underside, between the mythic
significance of family lineage and growing reality of women's resistance,
and between the need to empower and the ethics of confidentiality, there
will continue to be tension. In becoming involved in feminist ethnography,
we are inevitably engaged with the being and becoming of people's lives.
In that, our moral responsibility represents a complex negotiation that
contributes to the constitution and production of those lives. Similarly, our
critica! engagement with the " foil texture of embeddedness" that defines
the conditions and power of social relations " is crucial if researchers are to
move . . . into 'the political' to effect change " ( Moss, 1 9 95b, p. 44 7 ) .
l t is not only men who live "in a time warp from the fifties " o n Grand
Manan. Our feminist ethnography cannot easily separare or disentangle
the lives of women and men, the spaces of public and prívate, nor the
activities of production and reproduction. Our research is always a bor
derland that may be guided by politics, but which must be infused with
sensitivity and underlain by a strong code of ethics. Strong women deserve
1 86 JOAN MAR S H A L L
strong respect. 1 t is our privilege a n d their generosity that allows us t o be

there.
R E S E A R C H TIP
At the l nterv i ew
• Ensure that both you and your subjects are positioned comfortably
and close to your tape recorder. lf you are not recording the
interview, be sure to have enough space to take notes.
• Reiterate the voluntary nature of participation .
• Make sure that your tape recorder is working properly.
• Demonstrate flexibility in interview timing, taking into account the
potential for interruptions.
• Acknowledge the need for breaks.
• Listen actively, e . g . smile and nod in response to your interviewee's
comments rather than merely uttering " uh h uh " .
• Be patient, being careful not to force the pace of the interview -
silences can be productive spaces .
• Be conscious of non-verbal cues and communication.
• Be respectful of the interviewee and their space.
• Promise only things that you can deliver.
• Express appreciation for the participant' s time and energy.
• lf appropriate, reiterate your openness to continued com
munication.
11
N egotiating Positionings: Exchanging

Life Stories in Research 1 nterviews
Deirdre McKay
To do research, you need to think about positioning yourself in the process

of collecting data and writing up. In interviews, people will ask you to
explain who you are and why your research questions are important to
you. To write, you need to reflect on the explanations you give and the
way you develop your questions. Each and every part of the research
process is open to scrutiny, not j ust by others, but by yourself, too. 1 open
up my research here by considering the dynamics of personal exchange
between researcher and respondents in interviews. My strategies for work
ing through problems of exchanging personal information, respecting
friendships, and advancing the goals of feminist projects are a starting
point for my analysis and critique, and yours, too. As you read my
reflections on interview dynamics, you can think about strategies to
position yourself within your own project.
Creating Common G round
1 spent 1 99 6 -7 in the northern Philippines, doing doctoral research on

gender and economic development. My project examined the experiences
of women who had traveled overseas as contraer workers and then returned
to the Philippines . These female OCWs ( overseas contraer workers ) had
often left professional jobs, partners and children in order to work as
domestics or homecare providers in places as diverse as Hong Kong,
Canada, Singapore, ltaly, Saudi Arabia and the United States. While
abroad, they sent money to their families. They returned with gifts and
capital to invest in small businesses. As O CWs, they also brought home a
set of experiences, memories and interpretative skills that they often cannot
express within their communities.
1 88 D E I R D R E M C KAY
Being a young woman, traveling on my own, 1 had something in

common with them. Or, that's what severa) OCWs told me, saying: " I 've
traveled alone, just like you . " Shared experiences of travel were a way of
creating commonality in difference, a strategy for creating a space between
us - a contact zone - where we could open up a dialogue. Such conver
sations happened in settings that framed them as " social interaction " :
public transit, storefront counters, over cups o f coffee i n people's kitchens,
walking up the path from the bus stop. 1 always named myself as a
researcher, but was often re-identified by my companion as, more impor
tantly, an independent female traveler - like her. These initial discussions
of femininity and travel began as gestures of friendship but 1 thought 1
needed to formalize them as " research. "
F ru stration with Methods
Using information from these social interactions, 1 decided to make guide

line questions for a semi-structured interview. 1 asked two of my OCW
friends to help me formulate my questions by doing an open-ended
interview, recorded on tape. By transcribing their stories and comments, 1
would be able to identify the themes that emerged and terms they used to
discuss them. The three of us set out to retrieve sorne of our previous
conversations as " data " for my project. Then 1 listened to the tape and
wrote up a list of questions.
As a strategy to design an interview format, this proved wildly unsuc
cessfu l ! Each time 1 used my questions to frame a woman's narrative, 1
either shut clown the conversation or elicited simple answers, with little
interpretation attached. Off the record, open-ended discussions with
returned female OCWs were much richer. We spoke about boyfriends,
friendships, loneliness and the many frustrations of being a foreigner. Our
exchanges had uncomfortably more of myself in them, but equally reflective
detail and revealing comments from respondents.
Discouraged, 1 returned to the original interview to find the transcript
filled with useful insights and quotable phrases. 1 saw that the successful
interview worked as an exchange of autobiographies between my OCW
friends and me, instead of probing their lives with a predetermined series
of questions. At those moments where 1 gave them sorne details of my own
story 1 found that respondents were most reflective and critica) of their
own experiences. When my gestures towards sharing their vulnerability
disappeared behind a structured list of queries, the data vanished alongside
the reciprocity. What 1 initially understood as an informal way of collecting
background material and establishing rapport had become a key element
of "the research . "
EXC H A N G I N G L I F E STO R I E S I N R E S E A R C H I N T E RV I E W S 1 89
The Real ltles of Research
1 tried to contextualize particular exchanges as " research interview" and

others as " j ust talk" but my respondents resisted attempts to creare this
distinction . They used ali their interactions with me to map similarities and
differences between our positionings and experiences. The space of dialogue
between us never vanished, but changed shape, being constantly recreated
from both sides. As friends and respondents, these women taught me that
my entire field experience was my project, not j ust the activities 1 undertook
with lists of questions. What 1 learned is limited by the leve! of comfort
they found with me. The selection from the interview 1 offer below suggests
how this relationship was negotiated. This excerpt shows how exchanging
personal stories allowed resistance to pass through my own privileged
outsider/researcher positioning. Highlighting this resistance situares the
anti-colonial and feminist politics of research in personal relations.
Exchangl ng M lgrant Storles
Ruth and Marilyn (not their real names ) grew up together. Both worked
overseas in their twenties and early thirties and they chose to be interviewed
together. We did the interview at my house one evening over dinner, sitting
around the tape recorder. From this conversation, l've chosen excerpts
describing Ruth's experiences in Italy and her eventual return home. Her
story begins with her first job as a housemaid near Rome.
R: Her son would bring me along into class . . . because 1 could speak
English and that was . . . different - show and tell, you know. And they
would teach me ltalian, but after two months 1 was getting very frustrated.
I'm going. 1 don't know where I'm going, but I'm going! My friend Ida called
me from Rome and 1 said, how 'bout my off <lay! They were nice people,
protective and stuff like that, but 1 was j ust feeling that 1 was in jail. . . . So 1
didn't go back for a week . . . and then 1 realized "what would 1 be doing for
a job ? " So 1 stayed with Filipinos, women and men, in a pension - and hoy,
was there a lot of misdirected stuff, stealing, sex [laughs] going on in there.
"Oh my gosh, this is worse than what 1 left, I'm going back ! " 1 called my
employer: "l'm coming back ! ! " And after a few weeks, confusion again. My
pride was lame - you don't have your pride anymore, you know, you're
working as a helper and then ali this other stuff . . . and feeling so deprived
of everything, you know ? And 1 left again and went back to Rome . . . 1 was
really desperate for companionship and, umm, my friends and 1 were j ust on
the loose. Whoever speaks English, here we are - we want to speak English
with you guys. We met these African guys. They speak English, right ? "Wow,
1 90 DEIRDRE M C KAY
they really speak English, let's go for it ! " And then we ended up kind of
staying with them in hotels and stuff like that . . . Another whole mess, you
know. lt's another whole mess. Gosh, it was devastating . . .
M: Was it for your rent ?
R: Yeah . . . Well, this guy had a salary [trails off] And so, what else do
you want to know?
D: Wow, that sounds really familiar, like my own time - when 1 was out in
Africa. 1 went there with my boyfriend and then 1 split up with him . . 1 was
.
working, as a barmaid in this hotel bar and sorne of the girls who were
working in the bar and we went out for drinks . . . One of the guys asked me
out the next day . . . And then, no money, only tips and it was kind of hard
to get away from him . . .
( CUT: Deirdre and Marilyn discuss details of relationships while in hospital

ity sector jobs.)
R: lt's when you're like, illegal, you know? When you're desperate, you do
the worst you can ever do . . .
M: Yeah.
D: Yeah.
R: At least 1 had a hotel - these guys were training in the airport in Rome
. . . But, for me, later on, 1 felt like 1 was, used, you know? Finally we found
out how you could go to an agency and find employers for yourself. Y ou
don't need anybody there to find work for you. Because we learned the
language . . . And we also found jobs through other Filipina girls and the
employers - they had friends who were looking for girls and so it went, like
that . . . And 1 was able to get rid of this guy. 1 was like, never mind, 1 also
speak ltalian, 1 speak English . . . These guys were married. lt was the lowest
kind of life l've ever experienced . . . But 1 tried severa! employers . . . 1 stayed
depending how 1 was treated . . . if 1 was paid on time, like that. And 1 finally
found this family and stayed a year with them. 1 worked so hard with them.
They gave me ali the benefits and stuff like that. They wanted me. So they
processed ali my documents and stuff. So, you know, social security and
health insurance . . . they processed it and they were being honest about it.
The group 1 was with, 1 was the first to have my legal papers worked out!
After a year, 1 met my husband and got pregnant, so 1 left, but 1 had to
make sure there was another Filipina to take my place, you know ?
( CUT: Details of Ruth 's marriage. )

R: 1 never told any problems - it was so shameful. They're so proud of
their little girl, she's out there, abroad, you know? She's gonna send a lot of
money. We're going to be rich. Because that's what anybody who goes out
of the country does - they're supposed to be sending money home. You think
that you can manage it, you're from the center of town, not the far barrios,
E XC H A N G I N G L I F E S TO R I E S I N R E S E A R C H I N T E RV I E W S 1 91
you speak English, you're educated . . . you know ? But for me, that's not the
case, the choices that I made - I was not able to send the money that they
were expecting. And that's shameful, you know, not to come home then, and
so I didn't have the money to come home and they died .
D: That's a really common thing for people who go abroad from here, isn't
it? Not being able to talk about how hard the circumstances . . .
M: Yeah, especially during that time, the 1 9 80s, when I was in
Singapore . . .
R : I realize there is freedom in the relationship with God. How dare you
j udge me! You know where you stand and who you are. That's enough
security to keep you going on with life. Now, my heart is heavy. At least,
now, I am able to talk to people going outside of the country, working
abroad. At least they have to get a glimpse, you know, of what they're going
to find out there. What people expect. What employers expect and stuff like
that, you know ? Because we carne out there and we weren't instructed on
what we were going to do, they threw us into a totally different environment.
And I was like: What's this? I'm going to have to do it on my own, nobody
told me. It was a total shock. That's my goal: to be able to help. To help
people prepare and inform them on what they're going to expect, going out
of the country.
D: What would you tell them?
R: Well, it's always agency, agency t o agency like that, when y o u c a n d o i t
on you're own. Well, if you speak English, like most Filipinos, English i s
spoken worldwide a n d you can d o i t , you don't have t o throw a large amount
of money to agencies . I'm really, really mad because of my experience with
agencies. If I could get one lady out of the devastation that's going on out
there, running from agency to agency, I would feel better. What's the worst
is the Filipinos ripping off Filipinos. Ummm. You know, it's j ust ridiculous.
We ali need money but you don't have to live off your fellow Filipino and
lead a luxurious life . . . When you know the law, you have to be educated
with the law, you can do anything if you have it in your hands. A lot of the
employers don't do what they should for the helpers. It's the same ali over
the world . . .
But it's hard, especially for Filipinos to speak out. We've been so sup
pressed through our culture. Mabain [shy, ashamed, embarrassed - DM] -
who's going to speak out? You know ? We cannot speak up for our own
rights because of the way we grew up . . .
D: I wouldn't fault Filipino culture too much . . . You're isolated, you're in
a different place and you don't go out, you don't know what your rights are.
I think it's anybody - you need to have the contact, the support, the
education . . .
M: But being mabain makes it worse . . .
R: Yeah, but then why cause problems . . . It's the colonial thing for us
Filipinos - if they're white, they must be right. That's how we were taught.
That's how we grew up here, you know!
D: That's true in Vancouver, too, there's a racial thing. One thing the
research [gesture towards a draft of Pratt, 1 99 7, on floor] found is that the
expectations of people at home weigh much more heavily on the Filipinas
and the employers know this. The women who come from Europe, from
Britain, they're seen more as tourists - having a working holiday.
M: Because they're white ! !
D: Yes, and because they're there for the experience, to improve their
English, not to send home one-third of their salary. So they're not as
vulnerable.
R: They've got their money, their families, the girls are j ust earning for
themselves . . . They don't get a phone call saying that your sister needs an
operation, send money right away . . .
D: If y o u look back o n i t , would y o u still g o abroad ?
R: 1 would still g o t o Rome . . . B u t 1 wouldn't d o sorne o f those things

again. Going there, it's a very lonely place, a very vulnerable place to be, in a
strange country, but it made me strong . . .
Analyz i ng o u r Exchange
Reading this transcript makes me uneasy. I'm uncomfartable with the

power relations operating in the space between us and concerned about the
implications of re-telling these stories . Writing up the research seems to be
the key act of exclusion that recreates the visitor/friends divide into
researcher/subj ects. In writing this piece, there were sorne tales I j ust did
not wish to re-tell . So, like ali " truths," the transcript is fictive - partial
and farmulated far this context.
Though many women from the Northern Philippines have worked in
Singapore and Italy, personal histories revea! particular details. Ruth and
Marilyn asked me not to use parts of their stories far my research . The
circumstances of Ruth's marriage and Marilyn's hospitality work would
identify them to their community and our mutual friends. Having made
these cuts, I'm left with a dilemma. Should I present my narrative of working
on a tourist visa in a Johannesburg bar as a stand-alone confessional ? In the
end, I decided that alluding to it, without giving ali the details in the
transcript, would be enough to outline the dynamic I'm discussing here.
Writing up your research experience involves drawing a line separating
" the story " from the rest. I find it difficult to choose where to draw this
line. I want to balance the confidentiality of my respondents with my desire
E X C H A N G I N G L I F E S TO R I E S I N R E S E A R C H I N T E RV I E W S 1 93
to present the politics of the research interview. 1 made my decisions on the

basis that 1 wanted to focus on the way that the research interactions might
be analyzed, not the " truthfulness " or transparency of the narrative.
Both differences and commonalities in our stories emerge in the tran
script. As migrant women, we were commodified as aesthetic bodies,
worked illegally in the service sector, and struggled to maintain ties with
our sending areas. Like me, Ruth negotiated part of her j ourney through
relationship with a " boyfriend. " The relationship provided economic sup
port and companionship, but left her a bad feeling. She had objectified and
exploited her own femininity. But she had also moved from being the
English-speaking curiosity in a child's show-and-tell to a place of self
respect and strength. Her experience gives her critica) insights into her own
culture, the ongoing experiences of colonization and the lived meanings of
gender, race and ethnicity for Filipino women entering a global labor
market. For Ruth, participating in my project was a chance to speak
plainly, to sorne extent, in a context where the information might have an
impact on someone else. Our interview was also an opportunity for her to
speak back to colonization. We experienced differences in perceptions of
our ethnicity in our host society, racial privilege in particular contexts, and
linguistic ability. Ruth' s comments highlight how these differences reflect
uneven and hierarchical relations of ethnicity and race.
How could my analysis attend to both differences and common ground,
without one obscuring the other ? To theorize autobiographical exchange, 1
read about personal narratives in feminist theories of interview practice
and feminist geographical methods.
Autobiograph i cal Exchange in Fem i n i st Theory
Offering stories of your own experiences as a way of eliciting the same from
others is considered a feminine strategy. Participants in such exchanges can
identify overarching themes, as well as personal or group-identified differ
ences . This kind of talk can be therapeutic. By revealing previously hidden
experiences, women can explore the impact of cultural categories, social
processes and global economies in their lives. Sometimes these explorations
lead to expressions of resistance. In other contexts, women examine the
limits of their acquiescence to particular situations and attempt to create
shared understandings of the compromises they've negotiated. Female
respondents often bring expectations of therapeutic or political outcomes to
res earch conversations (Anderson and Jack, 1 99 1 ; Lather, 1 9 8 6 ; and Opie,
1 992 ) . Feminist scholars have, for the past two decades, called for method
ol ogies that anticipare female respondents' desires to find personal affirma
tion and social support within the research interview.
Likewise, researchers are asked, and feel obliged to answer, sorne very
personal questions about their sexual and emotional biographies (Twyman
et al., 1 99 9 ) . Feminist researchers cannot exclude this kind of talk from
interactions with respondents. In conventional methodologies, exchange of
biographical information occurs, but is classified as " establishing rapport"
rather than data. The researcher's biography lies outside the research while
the respondent's is made available for analysis. Oakley ( 1 9 8 1 ) , in what is
now a classic paper, initiated the argument for interactive self-disclosure as
part of a dialogic and collaborative feminist research process.
Stacey ( 1 9 8 8 ) highlights the dangers inherent in self-disclosures made
during ethnographic interviews. She argues that these egalitarian interview
practices are problematic because they produce apparent truth about the
" subjects " of research, without making the researcher's own story equally
vulnerable to readers' interpretations. Feminist researchers are likely to
emphasize empathy and alliance with their respondents and neglect to
report women's resistance to the intrusion and exploitation of the research
itself. Stacey is concerned that focusing on reciprocity creares a false version
of solidarity and commonalities between women. By emphasizing trans
parent, mutual understanding, the researcher could obscure conflicting
class, ethnic and other interests and the power relations of the research
process itself.
Feminist geographers have begun to include autobiographical narratives
in their research reports. Personal information on the author, in the terms
shared with the respondents, enables the reader to examine the data
collected and the roles played by researchers and respondents ( see for
example Twyman et al., 1 99 9 ) . Just as no gesture towards reflexivity will
ever achieve complete transparency ( Rose, 1 997 ) , no autobiographical
narrative will revea! or address the foil interplay of power relations in the
research process.
However, identifying a researcher's autobiography as " data " produces
an account of the research that contextualizes research more broadly. Yet
where researchers offer autobiographical detail in their writing, but separ
are their stories from those of their respondents, the terms of the exchange
remain outside the analysis.
To resolve these tensions, 1 decided to focus on resistance to my presence
as researcher within the interview and to the politics of research itsel f.
Resistance highlights respondents' negotiation of the relations of exploita
tion that Stacey is concerned that feminist ethnographies may conceal.
By exploring resistance, 1 might be able to better describe both the
reciprocity and inequalities between researcher and respondent. To do so, 1
decided to approach the exchanges of autobiographical information as
autoethnography.
E XC H A N G I N G L I F E STO R I E S I N R E S E A R C H I N T E RV I E W S 1 95
Auto b lograph l cal Exchange and Autoeth nography
Autoethnography is " self-writing-culture" - writing of a self back into a

culture that has been bounded and determined by the descriptions of
previous authors. Former research subj ects write themselves back in to the
official ethnographic record, resisting and renegotiating their representa
tions as produced and circulated through " research . " Unlike the specialized
academic system of description it critiques, resistance autoethnography
may be understood by a much wider audience. Using the everyday strategy
of telling personal stories to explain events and contexts makes autoethnog
raphy accessible.
Personal and autobiographical responses to ethnographic descriptions
can also be described as autoethnographic. Personal autoethnographies
critique cultural values that norm one's self-concept. These two forms of
engagement, resistance and personal positioning, are easily intertwined in
cross-cultural research. Analyzing a research interview as autoethnography
could provide a way to acknowledge both resistance and acquiescence to
the research process.
Autoethnography as Res l stance
Pratt ( 1 994, p. 2 8 ) uses the term autoethnography to mark the special

characteristics of texts and performances in which a colonized people
attempt to describe themselves in ways that engage with their representa
tions by others: " [An] autoethnographic text . . . [is] a text in which people
undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with the representa
tions others have made of them. Thus, if ethnographic texts are those in
which European metropolitan subjects represent to themselves their others
( usually their subj ugated others ) , autoethnographic texts are representa
tions that the so-defined others construct in response to or in dialogue with
those texts. "
Autoethnography is a characteristic response of people within the con
tact zone - a space where colonized people respond, resist, collaborate,
adapt, communicate and imitate in their attempts to engage the categories
and idiom of the colonizers. A contact zone is the space of encounter -
where colonized and colonizer are present together and to each other.
Here, ethnographers conduct research on the colonized and categorize
them. The contact zone is also the place where colonized peoples respond
to research and the categories used to describe them. The space between
res earcher and respondents in a cross-cultural research interview is a good
example of a contact zone.
In research interviews, autoethnography re-asserts the native self and

engages a broader audience, beyond the researcher. You can hear this in
Ruth and Marilyn's comments on colonialism ( see pages 1 9 1-2 ) . Against
my assertion of commonalities among female migrants, Ruth and Marilyn
insist on specific difficulties faced by migrants from a formerly colonial
nation. Their critique of Filipino culture engages with the stereotype that
Filipina migrants are " passive " and do not stand up for their rights. In
their experience, English language skills make them marketable as migrants.
However, their English carne with an understanding of racial hierarchies
instilled by a colonial educational system. They are not completely rejecting
the representation of Filipina migrants as reluctant to speak out, but
explaining this response in terms of colonial encounters.
Autoethnography as Personal Pos ltlon i ng
Particular self-reflexive autobiographical narratives are also autoethno

graphic. Reed-Danahay ( 1 999, p. 9) defines autoethnography as: "a form
of self-narrative that places the self within a social context. lt is both a
method and a text, as is ethnography. Autoethnography can be done by
either an anthropologist who is doing ' home' or 'native' ethnography or by
a non-anthropologist/ethnographer. lt can also be done by an autobiogra
pher who places his or her life story within a story of the social context in
which it occurs. "
Autoethnography thus marks a new type of autobiographical writing
where the author's goal is not to discover hidden aspects of the self but to
rewrite personal history in a way that (re)creates a collective identity. Such
autobiographies use the performance of language to critique and perhaps
subvert or expand the cultural categories that authors identify as structur
ing their experiences. Their authors position themselves, through the stories
they tell of their lives, at the critica! intersection of histories, cultures,
institutions and texts. An autoethnographic voice " concentrates on telling
a personal, evocative story to provoke other's stories and adds blood and
tissue to the abstract bones of theoretical discourse " ( Ellis, 1 997, p. 1 ) .
Anticipating and intending to elicit other peoples' stories with their autoeth
nographies, these authors engage their audiences in a reworking of group
identities. To work autoethnographically is thus to engage in a struggle to
politicize one's personal history - to mark the personal as political. Writing
this way requires the exploration of one's self-knowledge as a social
construction. An example of this is Nicotera's ( 1 999, p. 430) description
of her academic autobiography: " this autoethnography presents descrip
tions of events in my life when I was consciously aware of my existen ce as
simultaneous subj ect and obj ect . " A similar awareness emerges in Ruth 's
EXC H A N G I N G L I F E STO R I E S I N R E S E A R C H I N T E RV I E W S 1 97
description of her participation in the show and tell exhibit in ltaly ( see
first line of narrative ) . Though the family was nice, she felt like she was " in
jail" and left the job. Her later comments ( page 1 92 ) on her education -
" i f they're white, they're right" - explain the social context in which she
understood her employer's request that she go to school with their son .
Anticipating that other women will want to go abroad, Ruth wants to
share her story as a way of opening a dialogue on Filipina identities,
experiences overseas, and colonial enculturation ( see page 1 9 1 ) .
Ways You Mlght Use Autoethnography
Autoethnographic work is based on the double awareness of self as subject

and object and self-knowledge as social construction . By engaging in self
reflection on identity as historical, cultural and political, anyone can write
autoethnography. As a researcher concerned with positioning a " self"
within the research project and process, writing this way could be a useful
strategy. You could try it before, after and during fieldwork and see if and
how your self-understanding changes. Keeping your autoethnographic
exercises would give you resources to position yourself in your writing later
on.
Autoethnography is also a useful too! for the analysis of research
interviews, providing a balanced and n uanced description of the interview
context. To suggest the potential of such an analysis, 1 provide autoethno
graphic readings of two moments in the transcription excerpt.
First, 1 ask you to consider the moment where Ruth closed clown her
narrative (p. 1 90, line 5 ) . After her answer trailed off and ended in a
question, 1 shared my own experience in Africa (p. 1 90, line 7 ) , offering
what 1 now understand to be autoethnography to sustain the conversation.
My (unconscious) goal was to encourage her to feel comfortable with the
similarity of my experience. Ruth responded by continuing with her story.
Later, she spoke back, directly, to the racist overtones within my assertions
of commonality. Ruth's expressions of resistance to my identification with
her experience are a key part of reflexive research practice. In this interac
tion, my personal autoethnography elicited anti-colonial autoethnography
from my respondents.
My gesture towards the research results on the floor marks the second
autoethnographic moment. Both women had scanned text before the
interview as 1 explained that it would appear in an academic journal. 1
spoke briefly a bout my contacts with Vancouver's Philippine Women
Center and Gerry Pratt's co-operative research project on Filipina domestic
workers in Canada. Because 1 situated my proj ect within this field of
feminist research and activism, Ruth and Marilyn understood our interac-
tion to be an iteration of other conversations with women who had similar

experiences of migration . Ruth directs her comments to what she imagines
might be discussed in a broad field of research and representation - ideas
about Filipinas and Philippine culture. In this moment of resistance
autoethnography, Ruth corrects what she thinks might be misrepresenta
tions of Filipina experiences. The political promise held within the text-as
research-product sustains the dialogue between researcher and respondent.
That researchers can take personal stories and turn them towards political
goals, as exemplified by Pratt's paper, suggests why, despite her ambiva
lence and resistance, Ruth would continue the interview.
Work In Progress
My analysis of the excerpt of autobiographical exchange is unfinished. As

ethnographer, author and person, I'm ambivalent about this methodology
that 1 caught myself using, unplanned, unprepared for. 1 can't claim to
have worked out ali the issues, or even to have identified ali the salient
ones. Writing about this excerpt as a work in progress addresses sorne of
my uncertainties in autobiographical writing and my misgivings about the
realities of my field research.
By outlining a situation that every feminist researcher faces at sorne time
or another, 1 intended this piece to evoke emotions about exploitation and
reciprocity in the research process. Presenting you with a partial analysis
leaves room for your own stories of tensions between friendship and
research, questions and answers, self and other. Will you, as 1 tried to do,
take the risks of disclosure and exposure and call your exchanges of
autobiography a methodology for creating autoethnographic commentary ?
Or, will you withdraw your personal exchanges from the " data " you
collect and thus distance yourself from your subjects ? Would you, too, feel
ambivalent but relieved by deleting " research" versions of your personal
history from published interview excerpts ? There's no correct course of
action 1 can suggest for you; 1 can only ask you to think about when and
where you would make such decisions.
EXC H A N G I N G L I F E S TO R I E S I N R E S E A R C H I N T E RV I E W S 1 99
R E S E A R C H TIP
Post- i nterview De- briefi ng
• Regroup and eat sornething that pleases you (for energy) .

• Label tapes, and duplicate tapes (if necessary) .
• lf interview was not recorded, recount in detaíl the entire session
as much as possí ble.
• Make notes about the ínterview session, including you r
irnpressions o n the rapport, the content o f the ínterview, things
you rnight have forgotten, insights that carne to you during the
session, how you are feeling (tired, enthu sed, excited, nervous) ,
and so on.
• Transcribe the tape as soon as possible.
• lf ern ploying a transcrí ber , get the tape to the transcriber as soon
as possible and agree on cornpletíon dates.
• Talk with a colleague about any uncertaintíes encountered in the
session .
• Acknowledge the interview in sorne way, e . g . telephone call, thank
you card.
12
l nterviewing Elites: Cautionary Tales

about Research ing Women Managers
in Canada' s Banking l ndustry
Kim V. L . England
The amount of resources that it would take to answer your questions is

tremendous. lt would require a lot of digging and we're not going to do that.
Having read the types of questions and the leve! of detail you are asking for,
we are not in a position to participate at this time. Although we have done a
fair amount of work around the advancement of women at [name of the
bank] , the research and data is proprietary and not for externa! distribution.
So, we realized that we wouldn't be able to share much with you, and didn't
believe our participation would add much value.
These two guates are from responses I received to requests far interviews
with high-ranking managers in human resources at Canadian banks. In this
chapter I look at the process of interviewing " corporate elites" based on
self-conscious reflections on sorne of my research projects, especially my
current work on the gendered geographies of Canada 's banking industry.
In recent years, geographers have shown a growing interest in the study of
elites as elites, especially in economic geography ( see, far example, the
special issues in Environment and Planning A, Cochrane, 1 99 8 and Geo
forum, Herod, 1 99 9 ) . This is a departure from the more usual facus by
geographers on the politics, ethics and practicalities of studying relatively
less powerful, and even vulnerable groups. While sorne of the concerns are
the same in both cases, interviewing elites does raise different sorts of issues
than far researchers studying less powerful groups. In this chapter I offer
cautionary tales and what I hope is constructive advice regarding fieldwork
about elites.
I N T E RV I E W I N G E L I T E S : CA U T I O N A RY TA L E S 201
Genderi ng Workplaces, Genderi ng Work Practlces
In feminist geography, the field of paid employment has been a fertile area
of research and one of its most enduring. In sorne of the more recent work
in this field the workplace itself has come under closer scrutiny. Severa!
feminist geographers identify organizations as gendered and workplaces as
sites where identities, power and knowledge are discursively (re)produced.
They argue that the everyday social and cultural practices of work are
gendered and embodied ( see far example Hanson and Pratt, 1 995; McDow
ell, 1 997a; Halford, Savage, and Witz, 1 99 7 ) . In my research about women
managers in the Canadian banking industry I adopt the framework of
gendered organizations and gendered and embodied work practices. Can
ada has a national system of banks and is dominated by what are known
as the " Big Six" banks ( Bank of Montreal, CIBC, National Bank, Royal
Bank, Scotiabank, and the Toronto-Dominion Bank ) . In 1 996, 93 percent
of ali bank employees in Canada worked far one of the " Big Six" banks.
The " Big Six" are either headquartered in Toronto, or have a significant
presence there. Thus, 35 percent of Canada's " Big Six " employees are
based in Toronto, but they make up only 1 5 percent of Canada's total
labor force. Banking is highly feminized ( 75 percent of workers are
wome n ) , compared with the labor force as a whole (45 percent) . Moreover,
Toronto has a high concentration of women managers relative to men in
banking and relative to women in other industries. 1 decided that ali of this
made Toronto a good place to explore whether, as Eleonore Kofman
recently put it " majar cities offer women more opportunities far social
mobility, including movement from professional to managerial sectors of
the service class " ( 1 99 8 , p. 290 ) .
1 knew, from an analysis o f newspapers and news releases, that since the
mid- 1 980s the " Big Six " banks had introduced various policies and pro
grams to encourage the promotion of women managers, and that the
numbers of women in managerial positions had increased over the same
time period. The mid- 1 980s were also significant because in 1 9 8 6 , the
Federal government introduced the Employment Equity Act covering fed
erally regulated employers like the " Big Six" banks. Specifically, the 1 9 8 6
Employment Equity Act covers crown corporations and federally regulated
employers in the banking, transportation and communications sectors (with
at least one hundred employees ) . The purpose of the Act is " to achieve
equality in the workplace far women, Aboriginal peoples, persons with
disabilities and members of visible minorities. In the fulfillment of that
goal, employers are asked to correct disadvantages in employment experi
enced by the designated groups by giving effect to the principie that
employment equity means not only that they must treat people the same
2 02 K I M V . L . E N G LA N D
way, but also that they must take special measures and accommodate
difference " ( H RDC, 1 99 8 , p. 1 ) . In 1 995, the Act was replaced by a new
Employment Equity Act, which clarifies existing employer obligations to
implement employment equity. (See http://info.load-otea . hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/
-weeweb/lege.htm for more information about the Employment Equity
Acts. )
At the outset of my research proj ect on employment equity and Can
adian banking 1 set myself three broad research goals. First, 1 wanted to
document the increased presence of women in the managerial ranks the
" Big Six" banks. Then 1 planned to explore how and why the " Big Six"
introduced policies and programs to advance the promotion of women,
and find out the extent to which the decisions to develop these policies
were influenced by the introduction of the Employment Equity Act in 1 9 8 6 .
Finally, 1 wanted t o see whether the banks' policies a n d programs (that 1
presumed were developed in their headquarters, which in most cases are in
Toronto) had been portable "as is" to other locations across Canada, or
whether (and how) they had adapted them to different locations across
Cana da.
M lxed Method s, Triangu latlo n , and " S hameless Eclectlcism "
" Ethnographers have shown themselves to be willing to employ practically

every technique available to the social scientist: sample surveys, informants,
census, historical documents, direct participation, first-hand observations,
descriptive linguistics, correlation techniques, psychological tests and so
forth : 'shameless eclecticism' and 'methodological opportunism' are defin
ing features of the ethnographer " (Jackson, 1 9 8 5 , p . 1 6 9 ) .
1 a m sure 1 a m not alone i n feeling that these words still capture the
experience of doing fieldwork. Certainly in many of my research projects 1
have been a " shameless eclectic " and " methodological opportunist," using
a good number of the techniques that Jackson lists ! Moreover, sociologists
Rosanna Hertz and Jonathon Imber, in their important edited book
Studying Elites Using Qualitative Methods, point out that the " best
research on elites has utilized a combination of methodological approaches
to deepen the research findings . . . . Rather than assuming that qualitat ive
and quantitative research methods are always at odds, the multi-method
approach casts constructive doubts on relying on the use of any single
source of data or method" ( 1 995, p. ix) . And in their discussion of
postmodernism and organizational research, Martin Kilduff and Ajay
Mehra ( 1 997, p. 4 5 8 ) argue " that no method grants privileged access to
the truth and that ali research approaches are embodied in cultural
practices that postmodernists seek to make explicit. " Of course, this echoes
I N T E RV I E W I N G E L I T E S : C A U T I O N A RY TAL E S 203
the current trend among feminist geographers towards flexibility about the
correspondence between certain philosophical orientations and particular
methods, rather than sorne sort of methodological orthodoxy (see for
example G. Rose, 1 99 3 ; England, 1 994; Lawson, 1 9 95; Moss, 1 995a ) .
1 find that a theoretically informed blending of qualitative and quantita
tive is the most effective way for me to approach empirical research. For
example, one of my previous projects dealt with the role of local clerical
labor markets in the location decisions of firms in Columbus, Ohio
employing large numbers of clerical workers. 1 tackled my research using a
variety of overlapping data sets and approaches. 1 " triangulated" census
tract data analysis with questionnaires and in-depth interviews with both
clerical workers and personnel managers ( see England, 1 993, 1 995 ) . At the
time 1 was planning that project 1 was greatly influenced by critica! realist
methodology, in particular the concept of extensive and intensive research
(Sayer, 1 9 8 5 ; Sayer and Margan, 1 9 8 5 ) . By uncovering general patterns
and common properties among a representative sample of the population,
extensive research aims to answer questions like " how many ? " " how
often ? " Intensive research focuses on the question of "why ? " and is
concerned with how causal properties are manifest in a particular set of
cases and provides explanatory power. The basis of my extensive research
was the census data analysis and analysis of sorne other secondary data
and 1 envisaged my intensive research as set of case studies of a number of
firms involving interviewing the personnel managers and a number of their
clerical workers. However, after entering the field, 1 soon realized 1 would
need to really take seriously my identity as a " shameless eclectic " and a
"methodological opportunist. " 1 approached a handful of firms who agreed
to let me interview their personnel manager, but refused to !et me interview
their clerical workers. In a couple of instances, that 1 wanted to interview
their clerical workers led the firm to decline to be involved in my project at
ali. They usually cited reasons revolved around employee privacy. Of
course, this might be the case, but 1 wondered whether it was because they
did not like sorne of my questions (1 showed them the list of questions 1
proposed to ask clerical workers) and were concerned that 1 might encour
age unionization ( only a couple of the twenty or so firms where 1 inter
viewed personnel managers were unionized ) . lt became very clear 1 was
going to have to make do with whatever 1 could get. So 1 began suggesting
an alternative - a short questionnaire - to be distributed to clerical workers
b y the personnel manager and each respondent returning the questionnaire
in a sealed envelope. This proved to be more satisfactory to firms. One
personnel manager offered to give me a print-out of the firm's clerical
workers by sex and the zip code of their home address (one of my research
questions was whether the firms draw on highly localized clerical labor
markets ) . 1 snapped up the offer. And a number of other firms were willing
2 04 K I M V . L . E N G LA N D
to provide m e with similar data . But 1 still wanted t o interview women

who worked as clerical workers. In the end, 1 found respondents by
combing through the Polk City Directory to find clerical workers who lived
in the same suburbs in which the firms were located, and a few of those
women happened to work for the firms where 1 also interviewed the
personnel managers.
The experience of the Columbus proj ect, among others, behind me, it
was always my intention to enter the field in Toronto fully anticipating the
reviva! of the " shameless eclectic " and " methodological opportunist" when
it carne to the women bank managers project. 1 initially planned to use
secondary data and publicly available documents ( for example annual
reports from the " Big Six" banks and material from the Canadian Bankers
Association ) to trace the growing presence of women in the managerial
occupations at the " Big Six" banks. 1 " triangulated " that information with
material gleaned from newspapers, news releases and business print media.
1 then hoped that the banks would give me access to documents about their
employment equity and diversity programs (e.g. reports to employees
focusing on the banks' taskforces on the advancement of women ) . Finally,
1 wanted to conduct face-to-face interviews with human resources managers
specializing in employment equity and workplace diversity at the " Big Six"
banks. When 1 was planning this research, 1 had hoped to speak to a
sample of women and men managers at the banks about their careers and
balancing their work and home responsibilities, but my initial inquiries
indicated that there would be great resistance to this, both by the banks
and by the managers themselves . So 1 did not pursue this aspect of the
research . At the time, 1 thought my research goals were quite modest and
relatively uncontroversial. Was 1 wrong! Documenting the numbers of
women in managerial ranks was more time-consuming than 1 expected, but
relatively straightforward, and getting hold of interna! documents proved
to be far easier than 1 anticipated. Trying to get managers to agree to be
interviewed was very, very difficult. For example, in one instance 1 had the
following exchange ( the manager is a woma n ) :
Manager: Either in o u r previous conversation or i n this letter here y o u said

something about wanting personal opinions, but 1 am representing the bank.
Kim: Well, 1 meant that I'd be asking you a question like " If you had a
piece of advice to offer women wishing to reach senior management what
would it be ? " or "If you could creare your own employment equity program
what might it look like . " So 1 thought it better to describe that as personal
opinion than as representing the bank. But I'm not going to ask something
inappropriate like " Come on, tell me what you really think about the bank's
policy! " [Laughs.)
Manager: Hmmm. [Long pause.] Yes, that would be inappropriate. [Short
I N T E RV I E W I N G E L I T E S : C A U T I O N A RY TA L E S 205
pause.] Questions about personal opinions would be inappropriate . And

anyway, programs cannot and are not built on personal opinions.
Kim: Yes.
Manager: Well then, we're on the same wavelength.
This exchange took place on the telephone. lt was my fourth conversation

with this particular manager. Approximately four months befare this
conversation I telephoned the personnel departments of the " Big Six" to
ask for materials about the banks' programs for employment equity. I
spoke with the manager quoted above during this early stage of the research
process. She was very pleasant and helpful and chatted with me for almost
five minutes a bout the bank's policies and programs. Within a week I
received a very large packet of materials from her. As I thought she seemed
likely to be willing to be interviewed, I mailed her a letter describing my
research and requesting an interview. I included a list of potential questions
I might ask her. She then phoned me to ask me to send her the specific
questions I wished to ask her. I did so. We then had a further telephone
conversation discussing which questions she was not prepared to answer
and how she wanted sorne of the other questions reworked. I complied. At
the end of the telephone conversation in which the above exchange took
place she told me that despite her initial interest, she would not participare.
She told me that " the amount of resources that it would take to answer
your questions is tremendous. It would require a lot of digging and we're
not going to do that. " I concluded that interviewing elites is certainly not
for the faint-hearted. lt can be very disappointing, not to say deflating. In
fact, I had to develop what Joan Cassell in her study of American surgeons
described as " brute persistence and blind compulsivity" and like her I kept
"pushing, and trying, and hoping, and smiling, and pushing sorne more.
For this, a researcher needs a thick skin and a certain imperviousness to
rejection " ( 1 9 8 8 , pp. 94 -5 ) .
Are E l ites Seen but (Wl l lfu l ly) not H eard?
In the past Canadian banks were notorious for being particularly inaccess
ible and very guarded. For instance, until relatively recently most did not
even have websites. Colleagues warned me that I should expect difficulties
gaining access. In addition, a rumor was circulating that in the past a
graduare student had been given extensive access to one bank, and wrote a
dissertation that portrayed the bank in a very negative light, and now the
banks were unreceptive to academic researchers. (I no longer recall from
whom I first heard this rumor. More recently I have been told that this
2 06 K I M V . L . E N G LA N D
" rum or" might have been circulating for decades and perhaps i s worthy of
promotion to urban myth status ! Nevertheless it continues to work to deter
ali but the most determined and stubborn of researchers. ) Ali of this served
to make me anxious about my research because the harsh reality is that
there is an extremely small number of people for me to approach for
interviews 1 am dealing with corporate elites employed at six banks. So
-
rejection is more devastating to my research than if 1 were dealing with a

more plentiful supply of potential interviewees. The rejection 1 described in
the last section spurred me on to do as much as 1 could to secure interviews
with the other banks. Fortunately (and unlike many other sorts of elites or
even many other industries) there is now a wealth of secondary data in the
public realm about the banks and about many of their senior managers for
those willing to spend a great <leal of time surfing the web and ferreting
through libraries, archives, and the like. For example, the banks' websites
usually include things like recent speeches by the CEO, and news releases .
And commercial websites ( such as www.hoovers.com ) , and the annual
reports of the banks and other trade reports ( for example, those published
by the Canadian Bankers Association ) contain a huge amount of infor
mation. In addition, 1 found that many bank executives offer important
details about themselves for entries in volumes such as the Canadian Who 's
Who and The Financia/ Post's Directory of Directors. Ali of this is in
addition to relatively frequent stories about the banks' employment prac
tices in newspapers and business magazines.
However, this sort of carefully controlled visibility belies how difficult it
is for a researcher to actually meet face-to-face a member of the banking
industry elite. As with other elites, and as members of powerful companies
with national and international reach, the managers are able (i.e. they have
the power ) to construct and maintain self-protective and formidable barri
ers to deter unwanted " outsiders " like me. Michael Useem notes that " the
wealth and authority of corporate executives can be daunting terrains for
the first-time visitar. Their status barriers may seem virtually impregnable,
especially when contrasted with the thinly guarded and well-trodden paths
of the poor and powerless " ( 1 995, p. 2 0 ) . Elites in general may insulate
themselves from unwanted intrusions for many reasons. They may be
defensive or protective because they do not wish to be studied or to have
their " sensitive " decision-making processes revealed and scrutinized, or
they may be uninterested in the project, or too busy and wish to guard
against " unproductive " use of their time.
Moreover, as Robert Thomas remarks, " most businesses, no matter how
small, have gatekeepers who keep an eye on the comings and goings of
strangers. Large corporations, especially ones with trade secrets to hide,
have gates, guards, and security devices . . . . You cannot j ust walk into an
office suite and expect to strike up a conversation or hang out and observe
I N T E RV I E W I N G E L I T E S : C A U T I O N A RY TAL E S 207
the scene" ( 1 995, p. 5 ) . In ali but one case where 1 was granted an interview
by a " Big Six" bank manager, 1 arrived and a receptionist - arguably a
"gatekeeper [keeping] an eye on the comings and goings of strangers " -
telephoned the manager with whom 1 had an appointment and 1 was asked
to wait in a reception area until the manager carne to collect me. In the
other case, 1 arrived at the office suite that contained the manager's office
and was confronted not by a receptionist, but a huge frosted glass <loor
and a telephone without a listing of telephone numbers. Scrambling
through my bag, 1 congratulated myself on actually having brought the
manager's business card and 1 phoned her number. She greeted me pleas
antly and then proceeded to make remarks that made it clear she thought
we were going to talk by telephone. Obviously 1 surprised her by physically
showing up for the interview. She buzzed me through the glass <loor, and
then severa! minutes later emerged from the labyrinth of offices, again
expressing her surprise that 1 had shown up in person. 1 felt deeply
embarrassed by this and worried that the interview would go badly. But,
thankfully it went well . She told me "we get several requests for interviews
every week, we don't agree to do them ali . " She then paused, smiled and
raised her eyebrows, and continued, " mostly they are journalists and
mostly they want to talk to me by phone. " 1 took this to mean that one
reason she agreed to talk to me was because 1 am not a journalist, whom, 1
am guessing, she views with a degree of skepticism.
My point is that gaining access to elites is hard work. It is about
continua! negotiation, bargaining and compromise. Hertz and Imber ( 1 995 )
suggest gaining access to business elites is notoriously difficult for social
scientists. However, many of the chapters in Hertz and Imber's book are
written by academics in business schools or in management studies or
business administration. These authors and pieces written by other similarly
employed academics, do stress the difficulties of gaining access, but 1
cannot help wondering whether it was a good <leal easier for them than it
was for me as a geographer (1 frequently had to field the " how is this
geography " question ) . Many of the authors suggest that researchers draw
on professional or personal contacts, or say that they intend to use their
interview material for teaching or training future managers, or Jet organi
zations know that the researcher or the researcher's institution is a source
of future employees and consultants. These potencial advantages do not
really apply to me. Indeed, in one bank 1 asked about circulating a
questionnaire among their managers and offered to include questions that
they might be interested in. 1 was told that they paid outside management
consultants to do that kind of thing and also had a long-standing relation
ship with a professor from a prestigious Canadian business school who
sp ecializes in the advancement of women .
1 worked incredibly hard t o gain access. 1 used any means at my disposal
208 KIM V. L. ENGLAND
t o gain access. A s I have n o personal o r professional links with the banks,

I had to make a lot of "cold calls. " After many years of doing qualitative
research, I have much experience of being a " shameless eclectic " and
" methodological opportunist. " But my bank managers project meant that
I also quickly became a " shameless opportunist. " For example, I took
advantage of my colleague, Gunter Gad's suggestion that I use his name to
get my foot through what seemed like an impenetrable <loor and mercilessly
pumped an archivist for information once he seemed to connect with me
because of our shared " Englishness. " Gaining access also takes a long time.
It took me close to eight months to gain access to the people I interviewed
in 1 999. As I write this chapter, I am still involved in the process of
negotiating access to another bank. In this case, I am yet again a " s hameless
opportunist" having accepted Gunter's offer to accompany him on an
interview or have him ask questions on my behalf.
Many scholars claim that their success (or failure) depended to sorne
degree on timing, luck, chance or serendipity ( McDowell, 1 99 8 ; Parry,
1 99 8 ; Herod, 1 99 9 ) . This too has been my experience. For instance, one
bank had just received a prestigious award for their progress in promoting
women into senior management, and their personnel managers were very
keen to be involved in my project. In the case I described earlier a manager
seemed reasonably interested in my proj ect and then (rather abruptly)
ended what had been lengthy negotiations. A couple of weeks later, the
banner headline in the business section of one newspaper provided a
possible explanation - the bank had announced that it would be "shedding
j obs. " I like to think that this explains why she spurned me! However, I
think it is very important not to put too much weight on luck and chance,
or lack thereof. Negotiating and (hopefully) gaining access requires lots of
careful preparation. It requires thinking through why you want the inter
view with this particular person and being able to explain clearly (and
without jargon) why they should grant you the interview. I found it
important to do this because sorne managers needed to be convinced that I
really needed to interview them rather than their assistant or a more j unior
colleague, or in one instance, a representative from the public relations
office. Negotiating access required that I convince the managers that I
absolutely could not get the information elsewhere. In an effort to secure
interviews I sent out letters addressed to the manager I wished to interview
(I found it reasonably easy to obtain the name of the manager with a
telephone call to the headquarters of the bank ) . My letters included a brief
explanation of the nature of the research and emphasized the importance
of the manager's personal input in order for the project to be successful. 1
customized letters to indicare that I had done my homework . For instance,
I made sure I mentioned the names of the bank's specific programs, policies
or documents dealing with the advancement of women. 1 tried to make it
I N T E RV I E W I N G E L I T E S : C A U T I O N A RY TA L E S 209
very clear that 1 was not going to waste time by asking about material that
is available from other sources, and that 1 had customized my questions
based what 1 could not obtain from other sources. 1 now firmly believe that
it is simply not possible to over-prepare for an interview !
Eth lcs, Pos ltlonal lty and Power Relations I n the F leld
For sorne time now, feminist meditations about the research process have
confronted the impartiality and objectivist neutrality of quasi-positivist
empiricism. Along with severa! other feminist geographers, 1 reject the
notion of researcher as the omnipotent expert in control of both the passive
researched and the research process ( England, 1 994; Katz, 1 9 94; Rose,
1 99 7 ) . The strict dichotomy between researcher and researched is also
rejected, and there is a careful consideration of the consequences of the
researcher's interactions with those they research. Researchers are a visible
and integral part of the research encounter, and, as Liz Stanley and Sue
Wise ( 1 993, p. 1 5 7 ) put it, " researchers remain human beings complete
with ali the usual assembly of feelings, failings, and moods . " And, of
course, the same applies to the researched. Neither 1 nor the researched
have fixed subj ect positions.
Several feminist geographers, myself included, write in favor of pursuing
a supplicant relationship with the researched, and seeking reciprocal
relationships based on empathy, mutuality and respect. The appeal of
supplication lies in its potential for the researcher to cope with asymmetri
cal and potentially exploitative power relations in fieldwork. When 1 adopt
the researcher-as-supplicant role, 1 expose my reliance on the researched,
and emphasize that the knowledge of the researched is greater than that of
myself (at least regarding the particular questions being asked ) . 1 approach
fieldwork as a dialogical process constructed by myself and the researched;
the interview becomes an evolving co-authored conversation . The
researcher and the researched are capable of self-reflexivity and engaging
in the self-conscious, critica! scrutiny of their multiple subject positions.
Like many other feminist geographers, 1 am influenced by Donna Hara
way's ( 1 99 1 ) ideas about embodied, partial, situated knowledges. In the
context of planning and conducting fieldwork this means that 1 continually
remind myself that they, as the researched, j ust as 1, as the researcher, have
partial, embodied, situated knowledges, with the implication being that
that we cannot fully know each other.
As 1 wrote this chapter 1 mulled over the ideas described in the first two
paragraphs of this section in the context of my research about bank
managers. Severa! problems and concerns became clear. First, much of
human geography is done on the relatively powerless far the relatively
210 K I M V. L. ENGLAND
powerful ( Bell, 1 9 78, p. 2 5 ) . Many o f the ethical questions raised b y a

reflexive examination of power relations in fieldwork really focus on the
possibility of exploiting already marginalized people. Of course, as one of
those " relatively powerful " people - 1 am highly educated, white, native
English speaking, and have tenure at a PhD granting university 1 am also
-
a member of an elite (albeit a less well paid and, perhaps less prestigious
elite than that of the managers 1 study ! ) . Second, the assumption is that the
balance of power lies with the researcher, with research strategies often
involving efforts to produce polyvocal text, "give voice " or even empower
the less powerful. But as Hertz and Imber rhetorically comment " whose
purpose does it serve to 'empower' the rich and powerful ? " ( 1 995, p. viii ) .
lnterviewing elites meaos dealing with people who, a s Linda McDowell
found, are " sometimes keen to demonstrate their relative power and
knowledge and your relative powerlessness and ignorance " ( 1 99 8 , p. 2 1 3 7;
see also Schoenberger, 1 99 1 , 1 992; McDowell, 1 992c; Herod, 1 99 9 ) . What
power do academics hold when interviewing people who are accustomed
to having a great deal of control and authority over others ? My reliance on
the managers was obvious; that the managers' knowledge of women
managers in banking is greater than mine was self-evident. And 1 usually
felt 1 had little control over whether to position myself as a supplicant or
not. If anything 1 was assigned that role by the managers. Indeed, like
McDowell ( 1 99 8 , p. 2 1 3 8 ) , "I did not have to try hard to present myself
as an ignoramus" a bout the world of banking. As with my Columbus
project, 1 was constantly reminded that fieldwork is a discursive process in
which the research encounter is structured by the researcher and the
researched.
Doing research about elites raises sorne different sorts of dilemmas,
difficulties and concerns than doing research a bout less powerful, and even
vulnerable groups. However, just as with less powerful groups, interviewing
elites does involve the purposeful disruption of their lives and can be
intrusive. And j ust as with less powerful people, 1 am ultimately accounta
ble for my research, for my intrusions into people's lives as well as my
representations of the managers in published accounts (Okely, 1 992;
Stanley and Wise, 1 993; Wasserfall, 1 99 3 ; McDowell, 1 99 8 ; Parry, 1 99 8 ) .
And there still needs t o b e careful consideration o f the consequences o f the
researcher's interactions with those they research. Subjectivities are contex
tual, meaning that 1 (and, of course, the managers ) present different
personas in accordance with the particular circumstances. So my presence
and the managers' response to my presence doubly mediare the interview
data 1 collected from them. Just as 1 moved between slightly different
subject positions with different managers, surely the managers 1 interviewed
similarly choose which version ( s ) of themselves they wished to present to
me ( for example, many of the managers referred to the corporate " we " ) .
I N T E RV I E W I N G E L I T E S : C A U T I O N A RY TA L E S 21 1
Moreover, it is entirely possible that they were not entirely truthful with
me ( why should they be ? ) , that they told me what they thought I wanted
to hear, or that they wished to project the right sort of image of themselves
as managers and the bank as an exemplary practitioner of employment
equity.
Beyond the l ntervlew?
I always tape record interviews and as a general rule, I try to transcribe

interviews as soon as possible afterwards. I try to get a transcript to the
managers as quickly as I can ( although I am frequently less timely that I
would like to be ) . There are severa! reasons why I think sending a transcript
is a good idea. First, I want to be courteous and 1 especially want to
maintain the lines of communication ( having worked so hard to open
them) . Second, ( sorne) things move much faster in the corporate world than
in the academic world. So I hope a fast turnaround on the transcriptions
will help counterbalance their palpable disbelief at the length of time it
would take for anything based on their interview to actually be published
in an academic journal ( " It'll be ancient history by then, " one manager
remarked ) . Third, the managers can provide clarification and feedback . I
do not particularly intend this practice to be an attempt to make my
published text polyvocal as such. For instance, I have no intention of
substituting the grammatically " corrected " text that one manager returned
to me. (I assume that seeing his words as he spoke them written clown on
a page clashed with the polished image he wished to project. )
I a m privileged enough that I a m able to pay a professional transcriber
to transcribe my interview tapes. Sorne researchers think that the researcher
can only fully immerse themselves in "the data " if they transcribe it
themselves ( see for example Psathas, 1 995 ) . In my case, I chose to use a
professional transcriber ( Mary) for the sake of speed and because, quite
frankly, I really dislike transcribing (I spent many, many hours transcribing
very long interviews for my PhD research and I fear I may have been put
off for life ) . However, once transcribed I spend a great deal of time revising
the transcription while listening to the audio tape. I do this for three
reasons. First, to determine what Blake Poland describes as " the trust
worthiness of the transcription" (2001 ). I listen carefully to the tapes and
correct what I perceive to be Mary's misinterpretations of what was said
and fill in the blanks representing utterances unintelligible to her. In sorne
cases, the sound quality of my tapes was poor, but also because I was there
I am able to reconstruct the conversation. Mary, of course, could not do
this. In addition, Mary is obviously not a banker ( not that I am, but I have
come to understand sorne of their jargon) and is American, whereas my
212 K I M V . L . E N G LA N D
respondents are Canadian, so there were certain idioms and terms that she
did not understand, and had misinterpreted.
The second reason relates to representations of the data on the tapes. I
want the transcriptions to represent more than merely the utterances of the
respondents, I want to capture a sense of the way the words were spoken.
I add notations about ( sorne of) the interactions between the researched
and me (and in those cases where two people where interviewed, the
interaction between them ) . I want to add symbols for things like laughter,
coughs, intonation, pauses ( long or short) and interruptions. (I use sorne of
George Psathas's ( 1 99 5 ) scheme for conversation analysis. )
Finally, I consider the process o f transcription itself a s analysis since it
involves the interpretation of the original discussion, including decisions
about what to include and what to leave out, as well as where to begin and
end sentences. ( Customs of language and speaking, for example run-on
sentences, do not always translate easily into a written representation of
the conversation. ) There is not a one-to-one correspondence between the
tape recording and the transcription. In other words, the transcript is one
representation of the interview. In fact Mary's description of her job:
" transcribing is about placing a context on your best guess at what
someone is saying, as much as it is about getting the exact words" is also a
good description of my job of analyzing and interpreting the interview. I
listened carefully to the tapes, engaging in what George Psathas and
Timothy Anderson ( 1 990) refer to as " methodical listenings " which are an
important part of the analysis beca use " the status of the transcript remains
that of 'merely' being a representation of the actual interaction - i.e. it is
not the interaction and it is not the 'data' " ( 1 990, p. 77) .
Only occasionally have my experiences in the field matched up with what I

anticipated, hoped and planned for in my office. The field always surprises
me and it is always changing. As a researcher I find myself constantly
maneuvering around unexpected circumstances . This seems to be especially
the case when the researched are elites . " Respondents " have not responded
to my letters, have not returned telephone calls, lost my surveys, cancelled
appointments, cut interviews short, lost interest in my research, withdrawn
from the proj ect and so on - in short they have displayed ali the usual
failings of humans! I have become a " shameless eclectic " and adopted a
methodologically opportunistic approach to fieldwork because for me the
practice of fieldwork seems to inevitably become the art of the possible and
making the best of what you get, rather than the ideal hoped for when
planning the research. Also a flexible, opportunistic approach makes m e
more open to any challenges to my theoretical position that fieldwork
almost inevitably raises. For example, I often fine-tune my methodology
and even my research question in the field. So almost out of necessity, then ,
I N T E RV I E W I N G E L I T E S : C A U T I O N A RY TA L E S 21 3
1 have employed mixed methods, triangulating different data sets, and

practiced the imperfect art of shameless opportunism in the field.
RESEARCH TIP
Focus G ro u p Research
Preparíng for the focus group
• Do a p ractice focus group .

• Prepare materials, e . g . flip charts, pen, recording equipment.
• Set up and test recording equipment prior to focus group while
considering group size, acoustics of room, lighting, background.
• Think about venue ambiance.
• Be generous in your allotment of time.
• Schedule in break times.
• Enable an inviting and supportive environment by providing, for
example, refreshments, childcare, and transportation subsidies.
• Think of ways to hear everyone speak, e . g . talking sticks, time
limits, speaker 's lists.
At the focus group
• As researcher and as facilitator, introduce yourself and explain

your research.
• Explain rules of engagement and disengagement.
• Facilitate introductions of participants.
• Acknowledge contributions of participants.
• Follow up and express appreciation for participation.
• Ensure a successful focus group through careful preparation and
planning.
• As a researcher, clarify your goals and delineate the expectations
of focus group participants.
• As facilitator, explicitly acknowledge tension among participants
and work toward a resolution.
13
Studying l mmigrants in Focus Groups
Geraldine Pratt
When 1 collaborated on a research project with the Philippine Women

Center in 1 995, we chose focus groups as our methodology for studying
domestic workers' experiences. Our strategy was to break participating
domestic workers into three groups of four to six women each. Well into
the process, on the second full day of focus group discussions, 1 joined a
group of four women with whom 1 had not yet spent time alone, apart
from Center organizers . At one point, a woman turned to me and asked,
" How about you, Gerry, do you have a nanny ? " 1 told her no, and she
noted "That's a personal question. " Another offered: "Do you want a
nanny ? Take me as your nanny . " 1 answered that my child went to daycare.
With a joking, but pointed appraisal, a third woman j udged: " She will be
one of the good employers. " The first studied me and said: " You can see
in her facial expression. My employer is good but a little bit Tupperware
[plastic] . " Much was accomplished in this short exchange: the research
gaze was turned on me as a potential employer, the focus of questioning
was temporarily altered, and a momentary crisis in the possibility of our
relationship was voiced and resolved. Declaring me as non-Tupperware
signified to me a willingness to continue as research collaborators.
This exchange offers an entry into a discussion of the attractions of
focus group methodology for feminist researchers. One attraction is pre
cisely that the relations between the researcher and researched are more
open and ambiguous than in one-on-one interviews or survey research.
The recent popularity of focus groups arises, in part, out of concerns
about hierarchical power relations between researcher and researched, and
the limitations of predetermined, closed-ended survey and interview tech
niques. In the safety of their group, domestic workers could investigare
my personal politics and, as a " non-directive " methodology, the focus
group afforded considerable freedom to direct the discussion to topics that
S T U D Y I N G I M M I G RA N T S I N F O C U S G RO U P S 21 5
were important to them and to interpret the researchers' topics in their

own terms.
The attractions of focus groups go beyond this, and I elaborare them in
the first part of this chapter through detailed examples, mostly drawn from
a research project on immigrant settlement in Surrey, an outer suburb of
Vancouver, Canada . In this project, separare focus groups were held with
service providers, recent Indo-Canadian immigrants, a multi-cultural group
of recent women immigrants to Surrey, and second-generation Indo-Can
adians in their twenties. The process was also carried out by collaborating
researchers ( Gillian Creese, Isabel Dyck, Dan Hiebert, Tom Hutton, David
Ley, and Arlene Melaren) in four other areas in Vancouver. I thank Dan
Hiebert for participating in the service providers focus group in Surrey, and
Margaret Walton Roberts and Wendy Mendes Crabb for assistance in
setting up and conducting the focus groups in Surrey. ( For a discussion of
sorne of the substantive themes that emerged from the focus groups, see
Hiebert, Creese, Dyck, Ley, Melaren and Pratt, 1 99 8 . )
This chapter i s not a manual for doing focus groups. Severa! such
manuals already exist, as for example, Krueger ( 1 994 ) , Morgan ( 1 997,
1 99 8 ) and Barbour and Kitzinger ( 1 9 9 9 ) . Rather, this paper takes up
Wilkinson's concern ( 1 99 9 ) that feminists have yet to fully realize the
potentials of focus group methodology; my hope is that a close reading of
severa! focus group transcripts will encourage feminist researchers to
engage these potentials and to think more creatively about the particularity
of the information produced through focus groups. Developing a specific
analysis of the potentials of focus groups also involves considering their
limitations; in the second half of the paper I turn to sorne of the challenges
that I have encountered running focus groups among recent immigrants to
Vancouver.
Focus G roups as Process
Focus groups potentially offer a safe space - literally safety in numbers - in

which to discuss issues and experiences, and one in which the authority of
the researcher can be challenged and negotiated. They also assume and
produce a less individualistic mode of knowledge production. Focus group
methodology is premised on the notion that we develop knowledge in
context and in relation to others. One of the claims that is made of focus
groups is that they provide an opportunity to observe directly the process
of meaning generation: " how opinions are formed, expressed and ( some
ti mes ) modified within the context of discussion and debate with others"
(Wilkinson, 1 999, p. 67). In interviews, individuals tell us how they would
behave or have behaved in certain circumstances; the promise of focus
216 G E R A L D I N E P RATT
groups is that they provide a setting in which we observe how people

behave and make sense of their world in relation to others. Those who
recognize this distinction between interviews and focus groups have tended
to be disappointed by existing analyses of focus group transcripts, arguing
that the processual aspect of focus groups is typically ignored: researchers
pay little attention to group interaction, tend to abstraer attitudes from
discussions, and focus on the content of particular individuals' statements
rather than the process of meaning creation ( Myers and Macnaghten,
1 999; Wilkinson, 1 99 9 ) .
1 want t o present two segments of transcripts from focus groups i n
Surrey, with an eye t o what emerges through t h e interaction between focus
group participants. The first involves a brief extraer from an extended
exchange between two service providers who had not met previously, a
Chinese-Canadian man, and an lndo-Canadian woman. The sociality of
the process is evident, and as the two individuals find common ground
through an analysis of their organizations, they develop a critique of
Vancouver-based service organizations. Eventually (although not included
here) this extends to a critica! analysis of the way that the federal govern
ment regulares non-profit service organizations.
Dan: So, <loes an immigrant arriving in Surrey have approximately the

same scope for assistance as an immigrant arriving in East Vancouver ?
Male Service Provider (MSP) : Vancouver has more services for refugees.
Fema/e Service Provider (FSP) :I would say that Vancouver societies, if I am

not wrong, they are more mainstream, for example, [names agency]. So, as
compared to [the agencies of MSP and FSP] , we are more community based.
Do you find the difference ?
MSP: Well, [the Vancouver agency] is close to us. They are similar to [his
agency] . . . . Possibly they are both big enough that people find it a little
difficult to get to where they want, where they need. It's a matter of them
learning about the system.
FSP: I would say that the community organizations over here [in Surrey]
. . . and I have seen yours and mine . . . I would say they are more flexible
because most of the staff members have gone through the same experience. If
somebody's late: five minutes, ten minutes, we say that the person has the
right.
MSP: We are more in touch with the community.

FSP: Community. Yes. We are more in touch. We identify ourselves more
with the community, and community needs. 1 am talking on behalf of my
society. Just a small example. We have Job Seekers Club programs. Three
week programs. But given their needs, we allow our clients to come another
six months, providing extra services until they get a job. That I find a bit
S T U D Y I N G I M M I G RA N T S I N F O C U S G RO U P S 21 7
different from [the above-mentioned Vancouver organization] . Once the

program is over, they stop. But over here, looking into the community needs,
we are going deep clown into the community. We know their needs more. So
then we are more flexible . . . .
MSP: 1 think 1 tend to agree. We . . . tend to go the extra mile.
FSP: Extra mile. We go the extra mile.
At first, MSP aligns his agency with the Vancouver one but, as the
conversation develops, he refines his position, agreeing that the two agen
cies in Surrey are more community based, flexible and accommodating.
They come to this common position through a process of repeating the
same words (community, extra mile ) and affirming each other's position.
The next transcript segment does not work in the same way but the
formation of opinion through the medium of the focus group is just as
evident. The transcript comes from a focus group of recent Indo-Canadian
immigrants, one that was in fact organized with the help of FSP and took
place at her service organization. The exchange involves two Indo
Canadian men, one ( M l ) is older and of higher status. I first interpreted
this heated exchange as an instance of the censoring that can go on at the
public occasion of a focus group. I understood M2 to be censoring the
issue of racism. I now think that the exchange is more complex, and that it
has little to do with diverting the conversation from the issue of racism in
Canada. The disagreement reflects and allows M2 to articulate his criticism
of multiculturalism as a mechanism for the classification and segregation
of individualism by ethnicity. I quote the transcript at length; this is
necessary to convey the movement within the discussion .
Ml : And secondly, you feel more comfortable in a particular community

you belong to. For example, if you stay in an area where people from your
community are not there, you feel like an intruder. Sorne of those people are
not polite sometimes. Sometimes 1 am going to Vancouver downtown. 1 have
heard people shouting at me: " You Turban ! Go back to India ! "
FSP: No! Have you ?
M1 : Many times.
Gerry: In Downtown Vancouver?
Ml : Yeah.
M2 : 1 would like to oppose that.
Ml : 1 am . . .
M2 : My experience is that . . .
Ml : Wait a minute. 1 have my experience. 1 am telling you my experience.
21 8 G E RA L D I N E P RATT
M2 : Yeah, that' s okay. No, 1 j ust told . . .
Ml: Depends o n. . . . No, not many. You don't have, er, you don't encoun
ter certain people.
FSP: lt's part of Vancouver.
Ml: Actually, i t depends o n the time, place for example.
MJ : Sometimes it happens.
Ml : Yeah. [Others agree.] lt depends on the time. Firstly, in the evening

time, when ali those drunk people are there.
Fl : Teenagers or something.
M l : At the same time, certain other people stopped by, and said "Not
worth it. He's drunk . " 1 have seen that consolation also. This is, 1 am telling
you my experience. You don't have to agree with it or not.
M2: No, 1 don't say that.
Ml : 1 have not told that ali people are like [this]. Certain people at certain
times do behave like 1 am an intruder.
M2: No. Like 1 would like to only say my . . . 1 am not saying that you
.
don't experience that. But my feeling is that these things may happen. But
there it is. 1 can tell you, you go to Delhi and you are from Punj ab . . .
Ml: 1 also say that 1 a m telling you a n experience. Please !et me go.
M2: Okay.
M l : This experience i s not a generalization. This is, a t certain times, certain

places, for example, on Granville Street in the evenings. 1 did go. Sorne people
did shout. 1 am referring to [the fact that] if you are in a homogenous
atmosphere, you are not fe!t like an intruder. [Tells example from Punjab.]
lt's not against the culture here. People are happy. In downtown Granville,
when somebody shouted at me, other people stopped. He said " Don't bother.
He's foolish. " So 1 am telling the other side also at the same time.
MJ : Yes, segregation is there.
FSP: Segregation is there.
Ml : For example . . . 1 can give one more. Let's say immigrants come in
bundles. More people in one particular area. Immigrants have come. The
other people, let's say, 1'11 call, 1 don't normally call them whites . . . the, or
the . . .
M2: Euro-Canadians, Euro-Canadians .
Ml: Euroasian people. They move out because the Indians have come here.
So they don't feel like, not a homogenous group. They moved out. That's
S T U D Y I N G I M M I G RA N T S I N F O C U S G RO U P S 219
why most of the immigrants are here in Surrey. When an influx of immigrants
carne to this side, the white people moved out from the area.
Gerry: In Surrey ?
Ml : In Surrey, yes. People are moving. In an area where more Indians
come, the whites move out because they don't feel like staying in that area.
MJ : Maybe feeling segregated. [General laughter. ]
Ml : So this study's aim is to? Integration of . . . So you will be sending
proposals about segregation ? [Short discussion in which Ml remarks: "Good
thing this. Very good tapie. In need of this. " And then M2 draws us back to
earlier discussion.]
M2 : N o , I am . . . this . . . I am only asking y o u a question. I don't
understand that. 1 mean everywhere you see people treat ethnic groups . . .
group wise. Why don't they make it like respect the other individual. Forget
what his . . . . Suppose I respect you. I don't bother what your other personal
life is. Here I feel its more like a group-wide treatment. Like here immigrants.
That's also the group . . . . I mean, why is it group wise ? I mean I am asking
you that. Why . . . I mean in schools and anywhere. lt's mostly like they treat
as groups. Group as in, "Okay, tolerate this group. Tolerare that group. " I
mean, why not respect the individual ? . . .
Fl : In schools ?
M2 : I am not able to make myself clear.
Gerry: I am just wondering . . . is it something about the way that
multiculturalism . . .
M2: Ah, yeah, multiculturalism. I mean multicultural. What is it? Multicul
turalism is: you have made the groups one culture . . . . What my feeling is, it
becomes . . . then it is a group. So it gives in my mind: " Look at that group "
That group, right? Multiculturalism. Okay. Indo-Canadian. One group.
Rather than one man. That's it. I don't know to which one you [Pratt] belong
to. You are Canadian. That's it. [Ends.]
FSP: I think for policy issues, they have to make sorne categorizations.
M2: It's like in India. Also they have made categorizations. Like we have
sorne people in older times. Untouchable people and ali those things. When
you start treating them as untouchables, you bring them together. You made
a group. Then other groups oppose that group, rather than individuals. Then
the group becomes the target.
Ml : It's that particular groups have got different needs. That's why they
have to grade it.
FSP: Resources are different, you know.
M2 : That's okay. But when you say tolerate, the word tolerare. It's like,
" Okay, I tolerare you. Stand there. " [General laughter. ]
220 G E RA L D I N E P RATT
Ml : Anyway, that's a different story.

M2: Respecting is something else.
Gerry: Yes.
Ml : Anything else you like to know?

Gerry: 1 think that's it. Is there anything else you would like to know?
[Silence.] It's hot too. 1 can feel it. [Laughter. ]
M2 : Maybe more than that ? . . . I can only say it was a good discussion.
Maybe we can thank you for allowing us to blow out sorne of the . . .
FSP: Our frustrations, our anger, our tensions. [General laughter. ]
M2: 1 like that, see.
FSP: Now that we have given ali these frustrations to you, now you look
after them! [Laughter. ]
M2 : lt's your responsibility now.
Gerry: Well, thank you very much !
This is a complex conversational event, which begins with Ml explaining

his discomfort when he moves out of the ethnic enclave in Surrey. M2's
resistance to this perspective causes M l to qualify his statements about
exposure to racist comments in downtown Vancouver, while Ml 's refusal
to !et M2 speak forces M2 to expand his analysis beyond an argument
against spatial isolation to a fuller criticism of classification by ethnicity.
Drawing parallels to the caste system in India, M2 comes foil circle and
cautions about the way in which these classifications can lead to the
victimization of groups of people, a victimization that Ml seeks to avoid
by staying within these social and spatial boundaries. Ml also draws on
and finds support in FSP's bureaucratic understanding of the necessity of
ethnic classification far efficient administration of resources. The focus
group provided a space to argue, and through this argument we see
complex and important ideas being deployed, far example, the bureaucratic
discourse being aligned with a defensive approach to the ethnic enclave.
But it is al so unclear whether M 1 's persistent unwillingness to let M2 voice
his reticence about generalizing racist experiences in downtown Vancouver
causes M2 to express more strongly individualistic feelings than he might
otherwise; it is M2, after ali, who produces the category of Euro-Canadian
when M 1 searches far a category other than "white. " The arguments of
individuals, then, are situated and have to be assessed within the context
of others' views.
Wilkinson ( 1 999) interprets this contextual aspect of focus groups as
congenia! to a feminist perspective; it also moves us toward an understand-
S T U DY I N G I M M I G RA N T S I N F O C U S G R O U P S 221
ing developed by Visweswaran ( 1 994 ) through her historical ethnography

of women 's involvement in India's independence movement. Through a
series of triangulated conversations, Visweswaran discovers that she has
been deceived by a number of key informants. In trying to understand the
lies and betrayals that led to these discoveries, she moves her attention
from a focus on the truth or falsity of informants' statements to the issue
of why she is being told particular statements in particular circumstances.
This suggests a fuller contextual engagement than I have thus far
suggested, and a peculiarly geographical one. It indicates the need to be
attentive to the sites in which focus groups (and interviews) are held, and
the value of multi-site analyses to assess the contextuality of discourse. This
goes beyond concerns about site selection expressed in how-to-do focus
groups texts (that one find a comfortable, accessible, private and neutral
space ) ; I am urging geographers to more fully explore the geography of
discourse, the ways that focus group conversations change depending on
where they occur. In a study of seven-to-eleven year-old children, for
example, Green and Hart ( 1 99 9 ) find that the rules of discussion vary
depending on whether the focus group is held in a school or play group.
The researcher's role was more ambiguous and more open to negotiation
in the play group; within the school the researcher was firmly situated as
teacher. The play group conversations were less orderly and rule-bound,
and more extreme stories of risk-taking emerged. This is not to say that the
focus groups conducted in play groups were more accurate or more truthful
(indeed, there may have been more bravado displayed there ) , but that they
differed depending on the formality of the institutional context. The
geography of story-telling, and of opinion formation and expression within
focus groups deserves far more attention.
Focus groups are processual in the sense that they offer a glimpse into
social interactions; there is a further sense in which focus groups may be
useful to a feminist commitment to the process of social transformation:
conversations in groups can serve the purpose of consciousness-raising and
devising plans for action. I think that Baker and Hinton ( 1 999) are right in
cautioning that focus groups do not inevitably lead to participatory action
research and that change comes through additional practica! acts. Never
theless, when individuals are brought together in a focus group they can
discover shared experiences. This offers support and can lead to an analysis
of structures that condition these common experiences, provide oppor
tunities to share information and strategies, and devise new ones. In the
focus group with service providers in Surrey, information was shared: for
example, the planner in attendance gained knowledge about a multicultural
co-ordinating committee of which she was previously unaware. Participants
traded knowledge about existing research relevant to immigrant settlement
in Surrey and thought collectively about what further research would be of
practica! use to them. The activist potential of the focus groups with
domestic workers at the Philippine Women Center was perhaps clearer.
Far example, sharing knowledge led one woman to discover that she was
not covered by a medica! insurance plan, a discovery that precipitated her
individual action to remedy this. In telling her story among peers, another
domestic worker realized that her employers had paid at least twice her
salary for the tasks she <loes (childcare and housecleaning) when she went
on holiday because they had hired two individuals to do them. It was
through the telling that this became evident to her. And beca use these focus
groups took place within an activist organization, the transcribed evidence
has been used in reports to governments. As a collective activity, the
possibility of collective action following from focus group discussions may
seem more obvious than in one-on-one interviews.
Chal lenges
Focus groups offer the possibility of collecting data that shows how ideas
are deployed in social interaction in ways that can be put to use for social
change; this is not to say that they are without their problems and
challenges. Though I have argued that they offer the potential for less
hierarchical relationships between researcher and researched, other hierar
chies are ever present. These must be carefully negotiated within the focus
group, and assessed when interpreting focus group evidence. If we return
to the transcript from the focus group with recent Indo-Canadian immi
grants, it is clear that Ml is exerting the privileges of age and status. He
repeatedly claims his right to tell of his experience, remarks upan the utility
of the study, tells M2 when he is off-tapie ( " Anyway, that's a different
story " ), and declares when the focus group is over ( " Anything else you like
to know " ? ) . Returning to the focus group transcript, it is fascinating to see
how quickly he establishes his dominance. He is the first to speak. He
quickly establishes that what distinguishes Indian from Canadian society is
respect for elders. When FSP invites a young non-English speaking woman
to participate, Ml establishes that he, rather than FSP, will translate. The
following transpires:
Ml: 1 will translate.
F2 : [Speaks quietly in Punjabi.]
Ml : She says she has been here for four years, and she carne on married
basis.
F2 : [Speaks quietly in Punjabi. ]

S T U D Y I N G I M M I G RA N T S I N F O C U S G RO U P S 223
Ml : She first carne t o Kelowna, where her husband was. A n d later they carne
to search for jobs here. In search of j obs . . . We can ask her questions. [Ml
asks her a question in Punjabi.]
Ml : They didn't have any problems regarding housing. They found a house.
Gerry: How? Through friends or relatives ? [Ml and FSP ask her questions
in Punjabi. ]
Ml: From, err, through their relatives. They got information and they got
contacts. And, err . . . [Ml asks question, FSP clarifies and F2 provides
answer that elicits laughter.]
Ml : Let's elaborare a bit. She, um, gradually, she says she doesn't have any
good remarks. [General laughter. ] But we like to elaborare. [Ml and FSP ask
her questions in Punjabi.]
F2 : [E/abarates in Punjabi, speaking a little louder. ]
Ml : She says she has got frustrated because she couldn't attend school.
Because it was too costly. And, um [asks question in Punjabi] .
F2 : No.
M1 : She wanted to further her studies. She could not pursue those.
F2: [Speaks in Punjabi. ]

Ml : Yeah, she had a young kid. Nobody was there to look after that kid.
So she has to babysit for him. That's why she couldn't go for her studies.
[Asks question in Punjabi.]
F2: [Answers in Punjabi.]
Ml : She was in last year of graduation. So pretty well educated. She carne
from India. So she got married. She got involved with family life. So what
else ? [FSP asks question in Punjabi to which F2 answers, laughing.]
Ml: She says when she was in India, she had heard about Canada's garden
side, or better side.
Gerry: What about Canada?

Ml : Good side of Canada .
FSP: Very bright picture.

Ml : Good stories about Canada. The way of life, mobility, no scarcity . . .
In India, for example, there . . . the light service goes out, failure of light
system. [General laughter. ] Here, electricity doesn't fail. India, there's no <lay
when it j ust . . . [General agreement from the group. ] So these were good
things. So she was very pleased to come.
FSP: But over here . . .
M l : Other difficulties sprout here. And she is not happy. What else
questions ?
Gerry: Because of the education, and help with caring for her child?
Ml : Yeah. She has said that due to child care, she had to baby-sit, she
didn't have time and err, financia! . . . [Asks F2 a question in Punjabi. ]
Ml: She has no financia! problems. [Further discussion in Punjabi. ] Okay,

1 have a comment for you. Here, my daughter when she carne here, she was
having Masters degree in Science in India. She was good, brilliant. She carne
here, married here. She had child here. Then they decided, she and her
husband, since you can study, go in for medicine. She applied for medicine.
She took the entrance exam. She was top of the list. And after four and a
half years she became a full-fledged doctor. So that way, she has now two
kids by the time she is a doctor. She has two kids. That's why actually we
carne in the picture. We had to look after those kids. [Laughter. ] You can
still [translates far F2 in Punjabi] study here up to any age. It is no . . .
FSP: Every family has different circumstances.
Ml: Yeah. But n o financially, she doesn't have problems. S o when you are
to continue, you can continue. [General laughter. ] So any other question you
would like to ask her ?
Gerry: What kind of child care would help now ? [M1 asks question and F2
answers in Punjabi. ]
Ml : You don't have father-in-law? Mother-in-law?
F2: [Answers in Punjabi.]

Ml : She doesn't have any arrangement with any family to look after those
kids, so [asks question in Punjabi] . Suitable . . .
FSP: But, you know, it is not easy to pay. 1 think $400 a month for day
care. Every family can't afford this much.
Ml : So, since you are focusing on integration of immigrants, 1 think this

point can forcibly be put in - that if child care system is adapted to situation
like her, then they can pursue their aims and studies . . . childcare arrange
ments suitable to them. The childcare system are already prevalent here but
will not be suitable to her or me, let's say, because of high cost, secondly,
their method of handling.
Gerry: Could you talk about that, the method of handling?
M2 : [To M1 ] You are putting on your own answers.

Ml : No, I'Il tell them. l've got to . . .
M2: No. You suggested them, rather than her. The way you want the
S T U D Y I N G I M M I G RA N T S I N F O C U S G R O U P S 225
system changed. 1 mean, what is the problem handling, what is the problem
handling ?
Ml : Firstly, the children.
FSP: If you don't mind . . . [Discussion between FSP, Ml and M2 in

Punjabi. ]
M2: [Pointing at Pratt] She is the boss !
M1 : Y ou are the boss.
Eventually we ascertained that finances were not the issue, but that F2 had
been upset by [an] Indo-Canadian woman in Kelowna who babysat her
own child along with F2's child; she judged that this babysitter treated the
children unevenly. One pressing issue here is the difficulty of working in
translation, to which I return below, but another is the tendency for young
women to be spoken for. " Listen " to what happened when another
woman, who could speak English, is introduced.
Ml : [FSP looks to F3] She carne five years ago.

FSP: She is taking ESL classes. She should try with it.
M2: Yes, she should try.
Fl : Yes, she should try. lt's informal, yeah ?
FJ : [ With fluency.] Okay, 1 carne here five years ago. August 1 992. 1
married in August 1 992. And 1 carne here. My husband live here and he
sponsored me. 1 got baby in 1 9 93 . 1 got educated, no 1 . . .
FSP: No. You got less education. Because she has tenth grade.
FJ : 1 studied in Afghanistan. 1 carne from Afghanistan. And 1 study here to

tenth grade. And after that, like my parents are strict . . . and don't want me
to go out alone like that. So 1 didn't go anywhere in India. Like study more.
1 carne here and 1 stay at home. 1 don't have a babysitter. 1 didn't go back to
school for two years. Two and half years. And 1 carne here to [the agency]
and 1 <lid volunteer work for a couple of hours.
Gerry: Why <lid you start coming here ?
FJ : Because 1 carne here for ESL classes. My husband is working part-time,

like night shift. So he take care of my baby. And then 1 carne for ESL classes.
And then she told me to . . .
FSP: Apply for a daycare bursary.
FJ : 1 applied there. And 1 got the subsidy and now he 1s going to a

babysitter and I'm . . .
This is the last time we heard from F3 although three other people ( FSP,
Ml and M3 ) describe her great success in sorne detail. ( M l describes her
progress as a miracle. )
Status hierarchies do not disappear i n focus groups and Michell ( 1 999,
p. 4 5 ) cautions " against a headlong rush into adopting focus groups in an
unreflective way if this means further disenfranchising those at the bottom
of the social hierarchy. " Certainly, as Michell notes, sensitive group
composition (in above case, a women-only group - although note FSP's
role in speaking for F3 ) can help. But for sorne people - particularly
stigmatized ones - being brought together as a group can be further
stigmatizing. Michell writes from the perspective of a study of eleven-to
thirteen year-old boys and girls. For the lower status girls in particular,
there was a marked difference between what they said in focus groups
( basically very little) and personal interviews. lt was only in the latter that
stories of extremely stressful circumstances, particularly at home, carne out.
She asks that we consider which voices might be silenced in a focus group
setting.
Sorne circumstances may dictate the privacy of an interview. Michell
argues that the distinction between the privacy of the interview and the
public nature of the focus group is particularly acute when the participants
of the focus group are drawn from a relatively closed social world, as was
the case in her study conducted within schools. Any statements made
within such groups surely circulare beyond them. In these cases, focus
groups have the potential of being exploitative because participants are
persuaded by the artificiality of the context to revea! intimare details in
front of peers with whom they will interact long after the research is over
and the researcher is gone ( Green and Hart, 1 99 9 ) .
But a l l focus groups are public performances and, even among strangers,
it is unclear where the line between privare and public should be drawn. In
the focus group with recent Indo-Canadian immigrants, I began to feel that
questioning F2 about her childcare was intrusive, especially given the
confusion about her financia! circumstances and the invidious comparison
to Ml 's own daughter. But if sorne participants seem vulnerable to over
exposure, the other part of the public nature of focus group performances
is that disclosure is selective. From the segments of transcripts quoted, one
gets a sense of Ml 's representation of his daughter. But his glowing
presentation of his daughter was typical of every parent in the room: ali of
their children were the brightest, the most brilliant in their class. Certainly,
one of the parents did not revea! that part of their child's pleasure in
coming to Canada is that they can live their homosexuality more comfort
ably, an insight communicated to us by their "child " in a subsequent
interview. At the focus group we heard only about their satisfaction with
the educational system and success at university. The academic success is
S T U DY I N G I M M I G RA N T S I N F O C U S G RO U P S 227
beyond dispute, b u t m y point is that disclosure a t the focus group was

selective. We are now well acquainted with the idea that ali social identity
is performative ( Butler, 1 99 0 ) but it may be that it is more self-consciously,
more cautiously performed on the public occasion of a focus group,
especially when participants are acquaintances within a circumscribed
community.
A final challenge is also clearly evident in the quoted transcript from the
Indo-Canadian immigrant focus group: that is the difficulty of working in
translation. lt is clear from M2's protests that the translation provided by
M l was less than faithful. M l also gently subverts F2 's concerns about
childcare, trying to comfort her with the possibility of returning to her
education when her children are older. Ml is no villain here; he simply
instantiates a tendency. The same tendency was apparent in a multicultural
women-only focus group in Surrey; this case involves a woman translating
for four Spanish-speaking women . When a woman from Mexico expressed
concern that her son was learning Punjabi because they live in a predomi
nantly Indo-Canadian neighbourhood, the translator - who was not a
recent immigrant - responded in the following way: " I am telling her,
'Don't see ir as a liability . See ir as an advantage. The kid is going to have
another language. ' " The Mexican woman responded and the translator
noted: " Plus she thinks ir is difficult for her child to learn two languages.
And when they are learning two, 1 don't think children learn very quickly.
Mine speak three. " This intermingling of translator's and participants'
experiences in ways that undermine those of the participants no doubt
reflects the inexperience of the translators involved, as may a second
concern: the bland nature of the translated responses. Reflecting on their
experiences working with bilingual moderators, Baker and Hinton ( 1 999,
p. 1 05 ) note the disjointed nature of discussions that are interrupted by the
need for an interpreter to translate, and describe the outcome as " matter
of-fact and prosaic responses " in which " emotions and feelings are edited
out. " Certainly, my experience of working with the Philippine Women
Center has been my most successful experience of working in translation.
This was because the bilingual moderators shared a culture and had an
established rapport with the focus group participants. In this project, we
defined our objectives together in English, but the focus groups were held
in Tagalog ( or a mixture of Tagalog and English for the ones in which 1
participated ) . The tapes were transcribed in Tagalog and then translated to
English. Acknowledging the problems that attend any translation, this
method kept the richness of emotion and detail ( more or less ) intact.
Recou nting Potentlals
1 hope that 1 have conveyed sorne of the potentials of focus groups. 1 have
used focus groups at different moments in the research process . For the
Surrey study, they were used in the first stage of research, to get a sense of
what research would be useful to service providers and community groups,
and to identify key themes and concerns among recent migrants to Vancou
ver, themes that we pursued in more depth through longitudinal interviews
with a small number of households ( sorne of which were recruited from
focus groups ) , as well as a broadly based community survey. In the
domestic worker study, the focus groups were the main source of data and
1 have collaborated with the Philippine Women Center on a number of
papers and reports ( Pratt, in collaboration with the Philippine Women
Center, 1 99 8 , 1 999; Pratt 1 99 9 ) .
1 hope as well t o generare sorne enthusiasm for the unique potential o f
focus groups. They offer something other than a way of collecting interview
material efficiently (six to ten interviews at once ! ) . They offer a vantage
point from which to observe social interactions. By bringing people
together to share experiences, the researcher creares a small group that may
generare ideas and plans for action. And although 1 have not discussed in
depth the " how-to-do" aspect of focus groups, part of appreciating the
particularity of focus groups is recognizing that it is a methodology, and
not j ust a loosely organized conversational event. Careful thought must be
given to sample selection ( its appropriateness determined in relation to the
research question ) , and the moderator must be trained to probe effectively
and to lay down the rules that create a permissive environment for fair and
open discussion. The focus group is a single event and not equivalent to
interviews with the same number of individuals. This means that a single
focus group is insufficient; at least three or four should be done to evaluare
the consistency of the emerging themes. Krueger ( 1 994) suggests the
principie of " theoretical saturation " ( Glaser and Strauss, 1 967) to deter
mine sample size. That is, you conduct focus groups until the themes
stabilize and no new significant information is obtained. Focus groups are
public performances, and although interviews are no less performative,
they are certainly more privare and usually more appropriate for engaging
individuals in detailed discussions of their " privare " lives. As with any
methodology, focus groups are not appropriate for answering ali questions;
they are extremely useful for sharing experiences and assessing how ideas
circulare in a given cultural context.
S T U D Y I N G I M M I G RA N T S I N F O C U S G R O U P S 229
RESEARCH TIP
Cod i n g
• Maintain a detailed code book.

• Make clear differentiations between small coding units and larger
ones.
• Map the data prior to coding, e.g. prepare a set of descriptive
statistics far ali variables, make notes as to what tapies were
covered in what part of the interview, point out lacunae in the
data.
• Find a method useful far the research project, e . g . colors, letters,
numbers, snippets.
• Manage you r data by hand or by computer . Software can assist in
managing your data once it is coded.
• Persistence and acute observation are the keys to success. Far a
detailed example of how to approach coding, see Kirby and
McKenna (1 989) .
S T U D Y M AT E R I A L F O R D O I N G F E M I N I S T
RESEARCH
WORDS
Analysis
Autoeth nography
Bias
Coding
Eclecticism
E m bodied/e m bodiment
Eth n ography
Field work
Focus gro u p
l n -depth interview
Mu lti-method
O pe n - e n ded q uestion
O pportu n ism
Participant o bse rvation
Qualitative
Quantitative
Rapport
Research d esign
Research q uestion
Sam pling
Structu red interviews
Triangu l ation
Q U EST I O N S
Many of the authors note they have difficulty drawing definite conclusions
given that their research critiques the certainty of knowledge claims in
geography. This resistance is often viewed as a weakness of feminist
research . Do you agree with this view ? Why or why not ?
Sorne feminist geographers discuss their own complicity in the produc
tion of masculinist knowledge in situations such as being a feminist
employer, working within the academy, or accepting conditional funding.
PART 1 1 1 : S T U DY MATE R I A L 231
How might our research look different i f w e actually implemented our

awareness of our complicity in relations of oppression ?
How would you negotiate the following tensions:
Establishing rapport H being self-indulgent

Being strategic H engaging in unethical practice
Doing " relevant" research H pursuing a personal interest
Maintaining confidentiality H creating embodied texts
Explore other tensions between research and activism, theory, and practice.
E N GAG E D EX E RCISES
Refining research questions through semi-strudured interviews
lteration 1 : Set a research question . Find a partner who has similar research
interests. Together design two interview guides with between five and seven
open-ended questions focusing on the tapies of the two research questions.
Through this process, each research question is further refined.
Iteration 2: Conduct thirty-minute interviews with one another on
audiotape. Be sure that each partner is interviewed about her/his own
research tapie. Transcribe ten minutes of your own interview. Code it
according to examples in a handbook that you find useful. Analyze the
data according to particular themes. Themes arising from the data will be
useful in refining the research question even further.
lteration 3: Write up a brief ( 3 -5 pages ) interpretation of the data from
the interview. Be sure to include a discussion of the research process, the
analytical process, and the empirical findings. At the end of this process,
the research question should be clarified enough to conduct the research
itself. Good luck !
Understanding feminist quantitative research
Read the following article:

Gordon, P., Kumar, A. and Richardson, H. W. 1 9 8 9 : Gender differences
in metropolitan travel behaviour. Regional Studies, 2 3 , 499-5 1 0 .
Using a large national sample i n the US, this study found that women
consistently have shorter work trips than men, regardless of income, occu
pation, marital and family status, mode of travel, ar location and that
women undertake more non-work trips than men. The authors, however,
concluded that: "we are certain that many previous researchers have j umped
too easily from the objective fact of shorter female worktrips to subjective
explanations insufficiently supported by evidence but which happened to fit
very neatly their feminist preconceptions of sex discrimination with respect
to labour markets " ( Gordon, Kumar and Richardson, 1 9 8 9, p. 500 ) .
Critically evaluate the data used, statistical analysis, arguments, interpre
tation, and presentation of the results in the paper in light of feminist
epistemologies and methods. What kind of methodological flaws can you
identify ? Do you think the authors' conclusion is warranted ? Consider the
following:
How was women's household responsibility measured ?
Who were the individuals studied, and what groupings of these individ
uals were used in the statistical analysis ?
Which geographical area was included by the study? How was location
in the regression analysis represented?
S U G G ESTED F U RT H E R READ I N G
Severa! methods handbooks exist, sorne o f which are more useful to

feminists than others. The most wide-ranging reference book on feminist
methods is Shulamit Reinharz's ( 1 992 ) Feminist Methods in Social
Research. The book covers a wide range of methods that can be effective
in feminist research, as far example, surveys, ethnography, cross-cultural
research , and content analysis. Although dated, Helen Roberts' ( 1 9 8 1 )
edited collection, Doing Feminist Research, is still useful in identifying the
dilemmas feminists face in doing research. Far a step-by-step account on
how to do a feminist research project, Sandra Kirby and Kate McKenna's
( 1 9 8 9 ) Experience Research Social Change: Methods from the Margins is
the best " how-to " book we've come across. They include a number of
techniques that assist at each stage of the research process - from deciding
on a tapie and research question, to managing and coding qualitative data.
Margrit Eichler ( 1 99 1 ) pro vides an overview of ways to excise sexist bias
in a range of research methods.
Severa! topic-specific books are effective in preparing to undertake
research . Such tapies include oral history ( Gluck and Patai, 1 99 1 ), inter
views ( Kvale, 1 99 6 ) , community change ( Ristock and Pennell, 1 997 ) ,
participatory action research ( Maguire, 1 9 8 7 ) , focus groups ( Barbour and
Kitzinger, 1 99 9 ) , community activism ( Naples, 1 99 8 ) , and auto/biography
(Stanley, 1 992 ) . Interdisciplinary readers on feminist methodologies and
topical handbooks, too, may be useful ( Hesse-Biber et al, 1 999; Guerrero
1 99 9 ) . Although not necessarily feminist, Celia Gahan and Mike Hannibal
( 1 99 8 ) might be useful in using QSR NUD * IST as a qualitative analysis
software package.
PART 1 1 1 : S T U DY M AT E R I A L 233
In addition t o these reference books, Sage Publications h a s a series of

methods handbooks that can be helpful in figuring out which methods to
choose for which questions, including the Handbook on Qualitative
Research, edited by Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln ( 1 994 ) .
This enormous handbook i s now published i n three separate paperback
volumes: The Landscape of Qualitative Research: Theories and Issues
( 1 998c), Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry ( 1 9 9 8 b ) , and Collecting and
Interpreting Qualitative Materials ( 1 9 9 8 a ) . When used in tandem with
feminist books on methods, methodologies, epistemologies, and research,
these resources can be helpful for feminist researchers in geography.
Beyond the feminist use of methods and feminist methodologies, there
are issues within the research process that feminists need to consider. For
example, Gesa Kirsch ( 1 99 9 ) talks about the wide range of ethical quan
daries feminists face when undertaking to do research as a feminist: subject
positionings, interpretations of data, and the politics of publication . Lee
Harvey ( 1 990) pulls together a set of research examples and lays out in
analytical terms what is critica! about each research project. Both Diane
Wolf ( 1 99 6 ) and Rae Bridgman, Sally Cole and Heather Howard-Bobiwash
( 1 999) edit volumes wherein primarily anthropologists identify difficulties
in undertaking feminist research and elaborate the complexities of the
politics of feminism within research. Both volumes contain a range of
readings that take up the types of issues feminist geographers <leal with on
an ongoing basis. A special theme issue of Resources far Feminist Researchl
Documentation sur la recherche féministe (2000, volume 2 8 , nos. 1 -2:
9-243 ) addresses contemporary dilemmas feminists face in a variety of
qualitative research, including being a feminist in the academy ( Moss and
McMahon , 2000 ) , traversing the spaces between fieldwork and the class
room (Johnson, 2000 ) , negotiating institutional parameters within action
research ( Reíd, 2000), and deconstructing the interview ( Lyons and Chip
perfield, 2000 ) .
Outside this list o f references i s a plethora o f j ournal articles addressing
issues arising out of the research process. A wide range of geography
journals publish articles that might be of interest to feminist researchers in
geography, such as Annals of the American Association of Geography,
A ntipode, Area, Environment and Planning A, Environment and Planning
D: Society and Space, Gender, Place and Culture, Geoforum, The Pro
fessional Geographer, and Transactions of the Institute of British Geogra
phers, as well as a number of women's studies j ournals, such as A tlantis,
Feminist Studies, Frontiers, Gender and Society, International Women 's
Studies Forum, and Signs. Flipping through the pages of recent issues will
no doubt open up literature searches about methodological issues in
feminist geography.
14
Further N otes on Feminist Research:

Embodied Knowledge in Place
Isabel Dyck
The chapters in this book exemplify the notion of feminism as a process,

as laid out in chapter 1 , as a manner of asking questions and a way of
looking at the world. They illustrate different concerns for feminist
researchers in geography and ways of addressing these as they seek to
describe and explain our social and spatial worlds in ways that are inclusive
of women positioned variously in relations of power. In showing a variety
of ways of putting into practice geographical research that addresses
feminist questions and concerns, the authors indicare that how research is
done has a specificity related to where a study is conceived, designed, and
carried out. Space and place matter in conducting studies as well as in
constituting and framing the experiences of the women who are the focus
of inquiry.
In reflecting on their research experience, the authors articulare the webs
of tightly interwoven processes that inform and shape both the constitution
of geographical knowledge through feminist research and how that knowl
edge comes to "count, " or hold authority in understanding our social and
spatial worlds. The exercise of careful reflexivity, a common theme in the
chapters, shows the vagaries of the research process for the researcher -
not j ust in " gathering " data but in establishing research relations, writing,
and publishing. The authors' reflections emphasize fluidity and the instabil
ity of research relations and boundaries that are hard to predict, but instead
unfold during the research process. They give careful attention to moral
dilemmas and the positioning of researchers in their research. The discus
sion over and over again emphasizes the close interconnections between
theory, method, and epistemology. Through the discussion, the authors
uncover the uncertainties of the knowledge constructed through research,
as the local, embodied knowledges of the "field " are translated through
interpretive acts into the printed and spoken word that goes on to inform
F U RT H E R N O T E S O N F E M I N I ST R E S E A R C H 235
categories a n d concepts that are given life i n other contexts, a s for example
the policy document or media story. Constructing knowledge from field
research is a potentially daunting task and a heavy responsibility when, as
severa! authors suggest, it is from a context of fluidity and uncertainties
that we eventually " fix " meaning!
In these concluding notes 1 pursue sorne of the issues emerging from
such fluidity and uncertainty as they have interested me in my own
research. 1 focus on "context" and power, using the notion of geographic
scale to help trace sorne of the implications of the shifting, continually
changing research situations and relations that we encounter as researchers.
Pamela Moss emphasizes (chapter 1, this volume ) that the practicalities of
doing research are embedded in the relationships among contexts, power,
and knowledge; in verification the chapters in the book indicate that there
is a spatiality to research relations, laden with complex relations of power
that are negotiated throughout the research process. Here 1 aim to draw
out sorne of the issues relating to spatiality and context that 1 have found
useful in thinking through what it means to do feminist geographical
research in specific places. This means, for me, moving away from prescrip
tive research "to dos " and thinking a bout research issues as an embodied
researcher whose interpretations tell a particular story of others' lives and
embodiment.
Personal and Dlscl p l l nary J ou rneys
lt is clear from the chapters of this book that feminist geography has come
a long way since the early work of the 1 970s. Yet struggles remain, albeit
unevenly. Severa! chapters tell of personal journeys through the challenging
terrain of practicing geographical research that is feminist. Sorne of the
challenges in doing research about the ways places and spaces make a
difference to how women live relate to responsibilities in how data are
used. Who will benefit from our research ? How can our analyses go beyond
local meaning to make points about structures, discourses, and practices of
inequality that are relevant to many women's lives in different parts of the
world ? Other challenges come from the practica! and emotional experiences
of doing research in a specific place, whether this is familiar to us as "our"
country, "our" city, or carries the unfamiliarity of a perhaps exotic
"otherness. " As well-rehearsed in feminist methodological literature, much
of the challenge of research comes from a feminist sensitivity to issues of
power and ethics, not readily resolved ( see for example Wolf, 1 99 6 ) . But
such challenges are highly contextual; who one is and where one is make a
difference to how power plays out and ethics unfold in a particular research
project. There are intricate links between power and " context" for they
236 I S A B E L DYC K
frame what we choose to research , how we approach our research, and

what issues emerge as dilemmas in the field.
1 have been surprised over the course of severa! qualitative research
projects that new, unanticipated dilemmas and difficulties continue to arise.
Experience <loes come to aid, but still the realities of doing research in the
world that we are a part of can throw up previously unencountered issues.
1 describe a few of these later, but first 1 want to make the direct relation
between such " surprises" and the notion that research is embedded in
layers of context, a notion that has been explored particularly in discussion
of ethnography (see di Leonardo, 1 99 1 , for a useful exposition ) . Research
relationships, the situatedness of the researcher within intellectual currents,
and the location of the research and researcher within wider sets of political
and economic relations at a particular historical juncture ali shape how
social and cultural realities are perceived and constructed. While 1 think
many researchers implicitly recognize this layering of context, they less
often integrate it into analysis. For example, the fluidity noted in severa!
places throughout the chapters in this book, the authors do not often
pursue the notion of layering as an important feature of the meanings made
in research about places and people they talk about. Through the notion of
scale - moving from state leve! to where we live and work ( our everyday
worlds) to the specific setting of research, such as the home of someone we
interview or other such " field site " - the importance of that fluidity to how
we do research and the dilemmas we may encounter can be grounded in
material conditions, specific in time and space. Ali aspects of research,
indeed, are embedded in a layering of contexts. Yet these contexts shift,
and in sorne places and times more rapidly than in others. What research 1
choose to do, how 1 do it, and the specific dilemmas 1 encounter cannot be
completely abstracted from the materiality of the " where " 1 do the research.
As geographers we are in a good position to explore the intertwining of
place and subjectivity in processes constitutive of knowledge. Geographers
also bring an awareness of the significance of movement to social position
ings, identity, and experience - whether of the individual moving in time
and over space in a particular place, or of movement of peoples on a world
scale as processes of globalization dig dcep into local economies and local
lives. Massey ( 1 99 3 ) captures these connections between the global and the
local evocatively in her description of a London neighborhood where
people, goods, stores and services reflect larger scale movement of peoples
and settlement processes that result in uneven social and cultural transfor
mations. Power is necessarily part of such movement; who moves where
and how, what part they play in the global economy as it is experienced as
" local," and what access to social, economic and political resources they
have are ali outcomes circumscribed by the operation of power - again at
different scales. Immigration policy, political economy, local labor and
F U RT H E R N OT E S O N F E M I N I ST R E S E A R C H 237
housing markets, a n d everyday social interactions a n d institutional prac

tices experienced in the course of a day in home, neighborhood and
workplace come together to construct identities and experience. Context,
power, and fluidity are embodied in those whose lives we study and, just
as importantly, in our own.
My experience of movement through disciplines and between geographi
cal locations has formed how 1 look at the issue of context within research
as well as what 1 view as research dilemmas and issues important to
consider in doing feminist geographical research . 1 have moved from a
conservative health science through a politically left social anthropology to
feminist geography. In the course of my movement, 1 shifted from what 1
first experienced as a " white " industrial town in the UK encapsulating
"traditional " norms and ways of living gender, to more diverse cities in the
UK, to a divided (predominantly white and First Nations ) Canadian prairie
city, to a west coast "multicultura l " Canadian city that has experienced
rapid cultural transformation in only a few decades, and back and forth to
that formerly white, industrial town in the UK which now is largely de
industrialized and home to many former non-white colonial subjects of
Britain. 1 have also moved from the " certainty" of a scientific paradigm
and the body of medicine to ethnographic and other qualitative approaches
with their different standpoints and ways of viewing knowledge. This
movement through disciplines, intellectual currents and changing places
has emphasized to me the fluidity of places and people, the shifting nature
of contexts, the malleability of identities, and the way subjectivities and
places are embodied in a fluid way - we are where we are, as well as
"who " we are as gendered, classed, " raced," etc. ( see Grosz, 1 994 ) .
Thinking about the people a n d places o f m y personal journey signals to
me the importance of geography in understanding the research relations
located within a layering of social relations, movement of peoples, fluid
subjectivities, and changing place identities. Geography matters at different
scales, and one's social positioning and insertion in power relations has a
material accompaniment. Geography matters in that it makes a difference
to how subjectivities are formed and lived, with regional and national
differences coming into play in constituting social, economic, and political
life and how people carry out their day-to-day lives. lt also matters at the
scale of the specific spaces in which people conduct their daily lives;
identities are lived through bodily experience in the materiality of those
spaces in and across which the body moves over the course of a day. This
materiality of the everyday has been an important concern for many
feminist researchers. lt is from this location that we experience our worlds,
our gender, our class, our " race . " This is also bodily experience, our body
being the medium through which place is lived, with its layering of relations
of power.
It is from this point of connection, between body and place, that 1 now
go on to reflect on sorne of the issues in the practice of doing research
opened up in the preceding chapters. Conceptualizing these issues through
different scales, helps to reiterate the links among " context, " power and
fluidity that affect research practice. As the chapters of the book emphasize
we as researchers are part of this context. The in-betweenness of the
" researcher" and the erasure of the notion of the field, as noted by Nast
( 1 994 ) , is particularly pertinent to thinking through research as an embod
ied researcher interacting with research participants, each with her own
history and geography brought to the research. This takes on particular
importance when working in the fluidity of many contemporary places
which are experiencing rapid social and cultural transformation .
Dol ng Research " I n Place " : Context, Bod ies and

E m bodylng Knowledge
If we think of context at various scales, we can keep in the forefront of

analysis the connection between everyday lives in particular places and
institutional practices and relations of power. Funding agencies and their
review boards are also important players in doing research, sometimes
uncertain as guidelines and priorities change. Favored topic areas may be
subject to institutional agendas and political sensitivities, negotiated further
by review committees. Feminist methodological frameworks for research,
as in critica) qualitative research in general, may not readily fit into the
micro-accounting and strict time orientations required by sorne granting
agencies. lt is perhaps not surprising that a fairly narrow range of methods
are used in feminist research in geography and appear in this book.
Practica! constraints of budget and time, set with institutional expectations
of career paths, make it difficult to create a fundable research proposal
based on the exploratory nature and community building processes
required in developing action research that might be closer to advocated
feminist principies of research, where collaboration is key. The politics of
power are playing out through the day-to-day practices of governments
and institutions, and these inevitably affect at sorne level how we do our
research . These are place-based issues, reflecting national, federal, and
university concerns and priorities as the distribution of limited financia!
resources are organized.
Our relationship to place and how we live this also enters our resea rch
in other ways, whether this is research carried out " at home " or " awa y. " 1
am not pursuing this relationship in terms of the insider/outsider debate
that has flourished primarily in anthropology, but wish to look at this in
terms of sorne specific dilemmas that have emerged from my own research
F U RT H E R N O T E S O N F E M I N I ST R E S E A R C H 239
with immigrant families in Vancouver in studies conducted with Arlene

Melaren, a sociologist. These are in part related to " wider" issues con
nected with research funding and in part related to our concerns as
feminists in doing research in a way we consider ethical as mediated by the
conditions of a particular place that has undergone rapid cultural transfor
mation. Canada as a nation has a political commitment to multiculturalism,
which aims to afford equal participation in society regardless of cultural
identity . As might be anticipated this is not a seamless or unproblematic
process, and settlement and integration issues ( through the language of
social cohesion ) merit attention on the nation's agenda, as reflected in a
multiply funded project and its four research centers in Canada. Vancou
ver's experience of Canadian immigration policy change and world popu
lation movement is reflected in its rapid demographic change since the
mid- 1 980s that has resulted in a highly visible Asian and, to a lesser extent,
South Asian presence in the city and its environs. Neighborhoods and
suburbs of the city have changed from their predominantly white complex
ion over this period, although as would also be anticipated, unevenly.
Doing research in one of these suburbs has been a highly " contextualized "
experience; funding guidelines include a commitment to community partici
pation and training new researchers (graduate students ) and, as researchers,
we were continually reminded of our privileged position of whiteness. In
studying diversity "at home " the simple binary of " self" and " other" was
complicated as we negotiated our identities from a position within a non
homogenous whiteness - with its changing meanings in the everyday living
of multiculturalism - with study participants, whose identities within
Canada were in flux as they were creating a " new " life in a new " home "
country.
lnto this complex equation carne research assistants, with their own
histories and geographies, but with the mandate of conducting in-depth
interviews primarily through our - mine and Arlene's - lenses . They
included graduate students and non-university based research assistants.
All were white; one woman a recent immigrant from Mexico, one a recent
graduate, and two current graduate students. All had sorne, yet widely
varying, experience of interviewing. We felt the students and community
research assistants were gaining invaluable experience and skills from the
project that could be translated into their own graduate student work, or
would help the non-student research assistants, one of whom was a recent
immigrant, gain employment in a city where immigrant related services and
issues are prominent. They were pivota! to the success of the research as
intermediaries in the research process, building community links and
facilitating recruitment, as well as interviewing. The demands of the
research were high, and required research assistants to be considerably
flexible in their approach to research as they dealt with complex political
and personal dynamics including, for example, sometimes interviewing

family members together. While the training element of such work is
important, research conducted by people other than the principal research
investigators brought ethical issues in using research assistants to the fore.
We were concerned with the emotional distress one graduare student
research assistant had to address in one interview and the position she was
put in as a mother and daughter used her as an intermediary in a dispute
between themselves. Another research assistant was upset by the marriage
dynamics she witnessed. As social science researchers we rarely have the
training to handle complex emotions and relationships and have to think
on our feet, as we expected our research assistants to do. We bring our
subjectivities to research in different ways, and have responsibilities to
research assistants as well as to study participants, yet there is little
discussion in the literature about the emotional dimensions and demands
of doing research, especially in the context of conducting research through
someone else's lenses.
Another issue related to subjectivities in place, is that of the methods
used in research. The power of ethnographic methods of social anthropol
ogy in exploring social and economic life in a holistic way, is twinned with
the concerns of power in ethnographic approaches leading to questioning
of the links between feminist inquiry and ethnography and possible resolu
tions {Stacey, 1 9 8 8 ; Smith, 1 990b ) . In geography, ethnography is not a
common approach. More usual is the use of in-depth interviewing which
represents a modification of an approach which intends to give space for
the previously subj ugated (or invisible ) knowledge of the " subordinate
other. " " Studying up" of those in positions of power uses the same
approach - although the power relation between researcher and
" researched" is then more ambiguous than in interviewing those we
consider to be in a similar position to ourselves or those who are in less
powerful positions in society. A focus on power differential in the inter
view, however, needs to be located in those wider layerings of context if
the interview is to be understood as more than a simple matter of
researcher-" researched " dynamics.
Ann Oakley's ( 1 9 8 0 ) important article on interviewing women opened a
floodgate of discussion on power relationships in the interactive interview.
Geographers have also added to understanding of the significance of the
interview setting, typically the home, or other fieldwork settings to the
knowledge we construct ( see for example Nagar, 1 997; Oberhauser, 1 997 ) .
Certainly the locales o f settings for interviews are ladened with power
relationships, as again in the case of my own research these being framed
by the differential positionings of immigrant study participants and
researchers within the unspoken whiteness of multiculturalism. As places
change, so too methods may need to change, including the location in
F U RT H E R N OT E S O N F E M I N I ST R E S E A RC H 241
which, for example, the in-depth interview takes place. The " safe " space of
the home advocated in much feminist research may not be so safe for the
recent immigrant or woman in a vulnerable position. One-on-one inter
viewing methods, also advocated in feminist research in arder that a
woman may speak unhindered, may also have to be adapted in the social
reality of doing research. In our research experience with newly immigrated
women, we have interviewed mothers and daughters together, husband and
wife together, sisters together, whole families, and other combinations.
Increasingly, sorne type of focus group or group interview is found to be
more amenable to study participants who may be unused to western
interviewing, or indeed, tell tales in a different way. Collective story-telling
may also be combined with individual interviewing in gaining a more
holistic picture of a tapie. As contexts shift, intellectually and geographi
cally, a flexible approach to methods is a necessity. And what we consider
appropriate feminist methodology may have to be sensitive to the con
ditions in which we do research - much can be learned from negotiating
how and where stories are told .
The fluidity of th e contexts within which w e negotiate o ur research and
ourselves precludes a simple approach to accounting for and working with
the issues of power that feminists have centered in methodological discus
sion. Just as we get something " right, " another dilemma or puzzle is likely
to confront us in the exacting venture of doing ethically sound research
that takes our responsibilities as feminists seriously. We may be tempted to
blame ourselves for problems in the field, but in doing so miss a chance to
bring an analytical lens to such problems which can help us learn more
about the links between the practica! issues of fieldwork and the context of
our research. I have found thinking through the body a useful lens for
exploring links between power and knowledge in conducting fieldwork.
Feminists drawing on poststructuralist thought have focused on the inscrip
tion of normalizing discourses on bodies, such as those of " gender, "
"class, " and " race," set against the " unmarked" heterosexual male, middle
class, and white subject, and how this both mediares and ( re)constitutes
experiences, identity performance, and spaces through regulatory practices
and self-surveillance as the body as " text" is made and " read. " In relation
to constructing knowledge ( s ) , the body can be viewed primarily in two
ways. First is the body of the researcher, as the key research " instrument"
or "too! " of qualitative research , and, second, the bodies of research
participants - those we study - tell us more than the words of the
transcripts of their accounts, and help to integrare the body with other
geographical scales. In these ways research is embodied. The notion of
embodiment emphasizes the material spaces within which and from which
women speak or, alternatively, are silenced. Ir is from embodied positions
that threads between situated, local knowledges, and the organizing rela-
tions of power can be followed, challenging a macro and micro distinction

in analysis. As well, there are various embodiments in the research process
to be considered - of the researcher, of those who participate in studies as
research subj ects, and their respective positions in social relations and
discourses through which bodily experience and knowledge are
constructed.
Relations between those conducting research and those being
" researched " have long been a central focus in feminist methodological
debate. We are reminded of the complexity of the power dynamics of such
relations throughout feminist work in many disciplines, as well as within
geography. We are also reminded that our self-presentation in research is
an important dimension of the politics of fieldwork, although we may not
always know what may be appropriate to a particular situation beforehand.
This " surface embodiment, " through " adorning" ourselves in a way we see
as consistent with our identity as researcher in the specificity of place and
context of a particular study, is one dimension of the body politics of the
field, although gendered and " raced" identities are less malleable. I also see
the focus on body and its movements in the specificities of space as
interesting to think about in understanding how the bodies of both
researcher and researched may be used strategically or embody discourses
of power in the complex communication processes defined within an
interview setting coded as a space for gathering data ( the researcher) or
providing a personal narrative ( the study participant). For example, the
resistance of the elderly Punjabi woman who sat cross-armed with eyes
shut, declining to answer the questions posed by a research assistant, while
her daughter, who encouraged her mother's participation, responds for her.
Or the interviewer with her tape recorder, microphone, notes, and arrival
by car who brings in the " outside " authority of the university and
transforms the private space of the home into an " official " interview site,
rearranging the space as outlets for the tape recorder are found or it is set
up on a convenient table.
While we may be aware of, and perhaps make a point of recording the
bodily comportment and dress of those we interview in our fieldnotes, we
can be less certain of how our bodies and their political positioning are
" read" by those we interview. In research with immigrant families we felt
our positioning as " university researchers " might be read differently. In
sorne instances women clearly had paid careful attention to their appear
ance and dress for the occasion of the interview which was an opportunity
for them to link their concerns to people they perceived may be influential.
Did our style emphasize our links with authority-laden institutions - either
intimidating or, alternatively, increasing confidence in the importance or
legitimacy of our research ? But beyond our surface adornment were bodies
inscribed with gender and whiteness, and moved and acted in culturally
F U RT H E R N OT E S O N F E M I N I ST R E S E A R C H 243
specific ways, symbolizing the different positioning and entitlements in

Canadian society that we hold vis-a-vis the women we interviewed. In this
study we embodied the layered narratives and relations of multiculturalism,
a national research initiative on immigration, and the institutional codes
and practices of university-based research ( Dyck and Melaren, 2001 ) .
Patricia Price ( 1 999) discusses another way o f thinking about the body
in research. She sees the body as a site of embodied knowledge and a scale
for the focus of investigation. Interviewing women in Mexico she sees three
sites of the " very loca l " (domestic violence; religious faith; and inner
landscapes of hopes, fears and dreams) as entry points to the embodiment
of socioeconomic processes and increasing poverty as Mexico has been
subject to economic restructuring. Comportment, poor mental health, and
other dimensions of corporeality, such as the bruised bodies of domestic
violence, literally embody the socioeconomic and political relations
inscribed upon them. Thinking a bout the body in such a way in considering
interactions between researcher and " researched" can bring an added
dimension to our understanding of transcribed text and fieldnotes in which
our interpretations are grounded. Inscribed in different ways through
discourses and practices of power, we read each others' bodies. The tears,
hushed tones, and other signs of distress expressed by sorne women to us
as we talked of their immigration and settlement experience in Canada
embodied the struggles, fears, and disappointments as the " promised land"
did not always deliver. Work was difficult to find, and women at home
were often isolated and lonely. Certainly attention to the body, whether
that of the embodied researcher as primary research " agent," or the body
of a study participant as a site of knowledge embodying social processes
and material practices helps to keep in the forefront of analysis the
connections between everyday lives in particular places and institutional
practices and relations of power
Mov l ng toward E m bod led Research
Feminist scholars have been particularly searching in approaching how we

know the worlds we live in; identifying and attempting to make apparent
subjugated knowledges that have been buried within discursive and
material processes and practices that have naturalized women's and men's
sexed bodies, gendered activities, use of and movement across space, and
organization of power relations that reach every comer of social, economic,
and political life. Contemporary feminism's concerns with difference and
identity and ongoing discussion of epistemological issues have reiterated
the importance of embodied knowledge in pursuing a materially grounded
feminism. As feminist researchers, we are urged to choose methods that
ensure the ( bodily) experiences of women are the basis of our analyses, and
that the scrutiny we apply to our field methods includes reflection and
analysis of the ways they are embodied as we translate " data " and create
the legitimacy of our interpretations through the social and political
processes of academic knowledge construction .
In this volume, the authors provide a number of examples of ways of
operationalizing feminist research in geography that implicitly recognizes
the centrality of experience through the body as the basis from which to
construct knowledge. In addition to being exemplars of " doing gender " in
the specificities of place, the chapters also show that research is not a
matter of taking " abstract " feminist research principies and applying them
in any simple way. Ways of doing feminist geographical research have
emerged from feminist geographers' experiences in concrete situations that
have their own materialities and imbricated pattern of relations of power.
However, such local settings and the situated subjectivities of those we
study within them need to be placed in processes and discourses beyond
the immediate visibility of the interview setting.
A further point arising from these chapters is that the snap-shots of
people's lives from which we construct knowledge are located in a narrative
flow with which we may have little or no ongoing, direct connection. Our
interpretive acts - analysis, writing, and presentation - "fix" such ethno
graphic moments in the tales that we tell, perhaps with consequences we
may not be aware of. While the exercise of reflexivity in our research
cannot make ali transparent (after Rose, 1 99 7 ) , it is important to continue
to make our best efforts to uncover the mechanisms of the truth claims we
produce. This is perhaps particularly important when speaking as feminists.
Chandra Mohanty ( 1 99 1 ) draws our attention to the heterogeneity of
feminist discourse and practice, with these grounded in specific cultures,
histories, and geographies. White, western feminist influences dominate
geographical work at this time. In this volume, the authors, rather than
rigidly defining feminist research practice, open up a space far imagining
possibilities of doing feminist research in different ways. The examples of
research in this volume provide an exciting array of insights into what it is
like to do research. Mistakes can, and are, made, lessons learned, and
research practices adj usted to engage us in a richer way in our research. As
the Feminist Pedagogy Working Group notes ( p . 2 3 , this volume ) , there is
no one " good" way to do feminist research - every project must create
logical and practica! links to approaching a specific tapie in a particular
context.
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l ndex
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and public policy 1 3 8 -9 as resistance 1 95 - 6
Acker, J. 1 04 , 1 05 uses 1 97- 8
action 54, 1 75, 1 77, 1 79, 1 8 2-3, 221
action research 54, 221
Babbie, E. R. 1 06
activism 54, 1 75 , 1 77, 1 8 5, 1 97- 8
activity-travel diaries 1 69, 1 70 Babylon System 93-4, 1 00
advocacy 1 76 Bailey, C. 1 05
age 55, 5 8 , 62- 3 , 64, 6 8 , 70 Baker, R. 221 , 227
agonism 93 banking industry 200, 201 , 202,
Alton-Lee, A. 1 59 204 -5, 206 - 8
ambivalence 94 Barbour, R. S. 2 1 5
analogy 1 5 7 Biischlin, E. 7 , 2 9
analysis 4 6 , 5 1 Base! 2 8
Anderson, E. 4 4 , 5 5 Bay of Fundy 1 78
Anderson, K. 1 93 Behar, Ruth 1 04
Anderson, T. 2 1 2 Berg, L. D. 7, 8 8 , 146
anti-colonialism 3 5 -7 Bern, University 26, 29
anti-racist epistemology 44 Bernstein, S. 1 4 9
Antipode 2 betweenness 1 7 5
Anzaldúa, G. 2 b�s 44, 4 8 , 80, 1 05, 1 6 5 , 1 6 7
Aotearoa 1 4 7 science 4 6 -7
aspirin 4 6 -7 Biklen, S. 1 5 7
Atkinson, P. 1 5 7 binaries 7 , 1 5 5, 1 5 7
Austin, P. 1 8 5 Blunt, A. 7, 1 77
authority 1 3 5 -7 Bogdan, R. 1 5 7
authors 84, 8 5 , 1 3 5 Bondi, L . 8 0 , 8 1 , 8 2 , 8 4 , 1 1 7
2 66 I N D EX
borderlands 1 74 -7, 1 79, 1 8 0-1 , Creese, G. 2 1 5

1 8 2-3, 1 8 5 - 6 critique 1 3
Bürdlein, R. 28 culture 44, 45, 46, 5 5 , 1 75
Bowlby, S. 82 Curzon, Lord 34
Bowles, G. 2
Brod, H. 90 data analysis 1 0 -1 1 , 44
Buff, E. 25 feminist epistemology 5 1 , 1 5 8
Bühler, E. 29 fieldtrip research 1 5 3 -7
Burns, E. 1 6 7 quantitative methods 1 60, 1 6 5 - 6
Buschkühl, A . 26 space-time constraints study 1 70-1
Butler, J. 63, 8 7, 1 20, 227 data collection 1 0 -1 1 , 44, 1 8 7
Buttimer, A. 3 5 - 6 feminist epistemology 49-50, 1 5 8
fieldtrip research 149-53
Canada 200, 201-2, 239 Grand Manan study 1 78 - 84
Canadian Geographer 2 quantitative methods 1 60, 1 64 - 5
Cassell, J. 205 space-time constraints study 1 70
categorization 1 62, 1 64 -5 see also fieldwork; focus groups;
census data 1 6 6 interviews
Chouinard, V . 1 74 data sources 30
Christopherson, S. 8 2 data triangulation 1 53 -4 , 1 56 -7,
class 4 4 , 55, 5 9 1 6 3 -4, 203 -4
clerical workers 203 -4 Davis, K. 1 4 7
Clifford, J. 1 75 - 6 Dawes, K. 93
Cloke, P. 1 4 9 deconstructive technique 1 5 8
coding 1 64-5, 229 Demeritt, D . 143
collaborative proj ects 1 02 democracy 43
Collay, M. 1 5 1 Densem, P. 159
Collins, P . H. 2, 4 Denzin, N. K. 148
colonialism 3 3 -4, 3 7, 4 1 Desbiens, C. 7, 85-6
Columbus, Ohio 203-4 descriptive data 1 65, 167
community 1 74 , 1 75 , 1 78 -9 Deutscher Geographentag 25-6, 27
commuting distance 1 66, 1 6 8 Devault, M. L. 7, 1 1 8
compromise 8 1 di Leonardo, M. 236
computer software 1 73 , 229 diaries 1 69, 1 70
confidentiality 1 76 , 1 8 5, 1 92-3 dictionaries 78
congruencies 1 5 7 difference 23, 44, 1 77
connectedness 1 1 7-25 and language 77
Connell, R. 90 in research process 1 03 -4, 1 1 0,
consciousness-raising 1 77, 221 1 1 1 -1 3
contact zone 1 8 8 , 1 95 research relationships 7, 52- 3 ,
context 8 -9, 1 74, 235, 2 3 7 1 0 6 -7, 1 07, 1 1 7-25
focus groups 220-1 dinnsheanchas 3 8
and power 23 5 - 6 , 238 disability 5 5 , 6 6 , 70
and quantitative methods 1 6 1 disciplinary culture 1 50
see also situated knowledge discovery 1 4 8 , 1 5 3
contradictions 1 53 -4 , 1 5 6 , 1 5 7 disembodiment 1 6 1
control 1 1 3 -1 4 displacements 1 75
convergence 1 5 3 diversity 23, 1 53
Cook, ]. A. 2 domestic responsibilities 1 6 8 , 1 70-1
Cope, M. 50 domestic violence 1 8 1
I N DEX 2 67
Domosh, M. 2, 50, 8 1 see a/so autoethnography; feminist

Doyle, Roddy 3 9 ethnography
drawings 1 4 8 , 149, 1 5 5 - 6 evaluation forms 1 5 1
dress 1 1 0, 1 22, 1 26 , 242 Evans, M . 149, 1 5 7
Du Plessis, R. 1 5 5 experience 22-3
DuBois, W . E . B. 9 0 exploitation 1 50
duppy business 9 2 exploration 1 5 3
duppy feminism 9, 8 7- 8 , 9 1 - 1 0 1 extensive research 203
Dyck, 1. 1 76 , 2 1 5 , 243
Falconer Al-Hindi, K. 1 1 7, 1 6 1
economics 43, 45 Faludi, S . 1 3
education 41 family 1 74, 1 78 , 1 8 3 , 1 8 5
and unemployment 5 8 , 62-3, 64, feminism 1 4
66, 6 8 a n d academy 4, 8 0 - 6
Edwards, R. 1 1 8 - 1 9 defining 2 1 - 3
Eichler, M. 2 a n d difference 1 03
El-Or, T. 1 25 duppy 8 7- 8 , 9 1 -1 0 1
elites 200, 204-9, 2 1 0 a n d gender relations 1 75 , 1 76 -7,
Ellis, C. 1 96 1 79
embodied disciplinary identities 1 4 7 language 77
embodied knowledge 1 50, 24 1-4 and men 9, 8 8 -9 1
embodiment 1 47, 23 8 , 24 1 - 3 politics 1 3
emotion 1 24 - 5 a s process 234
empiricism 4 3 , 4 7 , 1 6 1 and public policy 1 3 9
employee-employer relationship Feminism and Psychology 84
59-62 feminist epistemology 1 0, 55, 8 8 -9,
employment see work 94 -5
Employment Equity Act 1 9 8 6 ( Canada) in practice 4 8 -54
201-2 feminist ethnography 1 74 - 5 , 1 76 - 8 6
Employment Equity Act 1 995 ( Canada) feminist geography 3 6 -7, 4 1 , 57- 8 ,
202 1 3 9, 234-5
empowerment 1 05, 1 77, 1 82, 1 8 5 and men 8 7- 8 , 89
England, K . 1 06 , 1 1 7, 1 1 9, 1 50, 1 6 8 , Feminist Pedagogy Working Group
203 , 209 1 6 -1 7, 2 1 - 3 , 77-9, 1 3 5 -7
reflexivity 1 04 feminist relationships 8 6
sense of failure 1 09, 1 1 1 feminist research 1 5-1 6 , 69-70, 1 04 ,
epistemology 2, 43-4, 1 75 , 1 76 , 1 3 9, 2 3 4
234-5 autobiographical exchange 1 93 -4
critiques 1 1 6 doing 9-12
duppy feminism 92 j argon 1 1 5
quantitative methods 1 62-3 methodologies 2-3, 1 2-14, 1 6 1 -7,
see a/so feminist epistemology; 1 72
knowledge taking on 3 -5
erotics 1 24 thinking about 6 -9, 77, 1 1 6 -1 7
ethics 1 76 , 1 77, 1 8 5, 235, 239 towards reflexivity 1 05 - 8
ethnicity 64 Feminist Review 84
and identity 1 1 1-12, 1 1 3 , 1 1 4 Ferguson, J. 1 75
and unemployment 62-3, 64, 6 8 fieldtrips 1 4 6 , 1 47- 8
ethnography 1 1 , 1 09-1 1 , 1 74, 240 data analysis 1 5 3 -7
borderlands 1 75-7 data collection 1 4 8-53
2 68 I N D EX
fieldtrips ( cont. ) Geographie heute 25

research findings 1 5 7-9 geography 23 7
fieldwork 1 75, 1 76 , 1 78 , 2 1 2-1 3 anti-colonial 35-7
elites 200, 202-9 colonialism 3 3 -5
Finch, J. 1 1 7 feminist epistemologies 53 -4
fishing communities 1 78 masculinity 1 5 8
fixity constraint 1 6 9, 1 70-1 geography fieldtrips see fieldtrips
fluidity 234-5, 236, 237, 23 8 , 24 1 geovisualization 1 6 1 , 1 72
focus groups 1 1 , 1 52, 2 1 4 - 1 5 , 228, German Geography Day 25-6, 27
24 1 Gibson, K. 63
challenges 222-7 Gibson-Graham, J.-K. 63, 1 0 8 , 1 1 1 ,
Grand Manan 1 8 0-1 120, 1 4 7
as process 2 1 5-22 Giessen, University 2 6
research tips 2 1 3 Gilbert, A.-F. 25, 26
Fonow, M. M. 2 Gilbert, M. 54, 1 1 8 , 1 4 8
Forest Renewal BC ( FRBC) 140-1 Glacken, C. 3 8
Foucault, M. 9 3 , 1 1 1 Glaser, B. 1 56 , 228
Fougere, G. 1 5 5 global economy 43
Fox, B. J. 1 76 global positioning system ( GPS) 35
Frankfurt 26 Gluck, S. B. 2
Friedman, S. S. 80 Gottfried, H. 1 77
Frohlick, S. 1 76 Güttingen, University 26
from aways 1 76 , 1 8 0, 1 8 1 , 1 8 2-3, Grand Manan Island 1 74 , 1 75 ,
185 1 77- 86
Frontiers 84 Green, J. 221 , 226
funding 8 , 2 3 8 -9 Grosz, E. 1 4 7, 237
Australia 5 8 -9, 6 1 groups see focus groups
and public policy 1 3 8-9, 140-1 , Gupta, A. 1 75
144 Guthrie, Woody 90
Gad, G. 208 Habilitation 28, 29n

gaze 1 07, 1 1 0 habitus 1 76
Gebhardt, E. 1 4 6 Halford, S. 201
Geelong 5 8 , 60, 6 2 , 64 - 6 , 67-9 Hall, Stuart 35, 4 1
gender 3 Hanson, S . 7, 1 67, 1 6 8 , 2 0 1
bias 1 6 5 feminist geography 36
feminist epistemologies 44 -5, methodology 2-3, 1 1 4
53 -4, 69-70 Worcester, Mass study 5 3 -4
and sex 87 Hantschel, R. 26
and unemployment 62-3 , 6 7- 8 Haraway, D. 7, 4 8 , 5 1 , 1 05 , 1 1 6,
a n d work 201-2 163, 1 75, 209
gender inequalities 80, 82, 1 62, Harding, S. 2, 7, 47, 80
1 76 -7 male feminists 89
Gender, Place and Culture 8 1 -5 standpoint theory 47- 8 , 94 - 5 , 97,
gender relations 5 1 , 1 6 8 1 0 5 , 1 1 6, 1 63
generalizations 1 6 5 Hart, L. 221 , 226
Geo-Rundbrief 27 Hartsock, N. 2
geocomputational methods 1 6 1 Hawkesworth , M. 7, 8 0
Geographical Information Systems Heartland theory 34
(GIS) 3 5 , 1 60, 1 6 1 hegemony 90-1 , 1 3 5
I N DEX 2 69
Heikes, E. J. 1 1 8 Grand Manan study 1 79-80,

Hekman, S . J . 4 1 8 3 -4
Herod, A. 208, 2 1 0 obj ectivity 1 05
Hertz, R. 1 09, 202, 207, 2 1 0 positionality 1 1 7-20, 1 2 1
heterosexism 55 power relationships 240 -1
Hiebert, D. 2 1 5 preparation 145
Hinton, R. 22 1 , 227 privacy 226
hooks, b. 1 05 , 1 77 reflexivity 1 06 - 8 , 1 1 1-14
Hopkins, M. C. 1 76 , 1 8 5 research tips 1 8 6
Huberman, A . 1 52, 1 53 , 1 56 , 1 5 7 transcription 2 1 1-12
Hudson, B . 3 3 intimacy 1 25
humanist 9 2 , 97-8 Ireland 3 1 , 3 3 , 37, 3 8
humanistic geography 3 5 - 6 , 3 7
Hurren, W . 8 5 Jack, D. 1 93
Jackson, P. 90, 202
identity 237 Jaggar, A. M. 1 77
and embodiment 147 Jamaica 92-3
and employment 5 8 , 63, 67-9 j argon see language
feminist epistemology 45 Jarosz, L. 8 5
feminist research 3, 6, 7, 22, 23, Jayaratne, T . E. 1 62, 1 64, 1 6 7
55, 1 1 1 j o b market see work
Grand Manan 1 74, 1 78 Johnson, L. C. 8 3
multiple 70 Johnson, R. J. 7 8
national 4 1 Johnson-Hill, J. A. 8 7, 93
and reflexivity 1 1 4 Johnston-Anumonwo, l. 1 6 8
relational character 120 j okes 1 79
Imber, J. B. 202, 207, 210 Jones, J. P. III 2
immigration 215, 2 1 6 -20, 226 -7, Jones, M. 1 2 1
239 j ournals 42
imperialism 3 3 -4 , 3 7, 41
inconsistencies 1 53 , 1 54 , 1 57 Kahane, D. 9 1-2, 94 -1 00
inequalities 80, 82, 1 62, 1 76 -7 Katz, C. 2, 50, 1 5 0, 1 75 , 1 82, 209
inferential statistics 1 6 1 , 1 6 5 Kaufman, M. 90
insider (male feminist position) 92, Kawabata, H. 1 1 1 , 1 1 2
9 6 -7 Kearns, R. 7
insider-outsider status 1 1 7, 1 1 9, Kensington Welfare Rights Union
1 75 - 6 , 1 79, 1 8 0-1 (KWRU) 54
integration 82-4 Kilduff, M. 202
intensive research 203 Kimmel, M. 9 1
interpretations 1 74 , 1 75 , 1 8 5 Kirby, S. 2
interview bags 1 5 9 Kitzinger, J. 1 52, 2 1 5
interviews 5 0 , 1 04 Klein, R. D. 2
activism 1 77 knowing analysts 1 0 8
autobiographical exchange 1 03 , knowledge 9, 4 3
1 8 7, 1 8 8 -94, 1 95 embodied 1 5 0, 24 1-4
de-briefing 1 99 and focus groups 2 1 5
elites 204 - 5 and gender 5 1
fieldtrips research 1 5 1 - 3 political process 7- 8 , 1 4 7
a n d focus groups 22 8 poststructural feminism 2 1 -2
Geelong study 62-3 research participants 1 09-1 1
2 70 I N DEX
knowledge (cont. ) masculinism

territorial 3 8 and feminism 8 7, 8 8 -9 1 , 95,
universal 1 1 6 99-1 00
see a/so epistemology; situated fieldtrips 1 4 6
knowledge geography 1 5 8
Kobayashi, A. 1 03 , 1 1 8 , 147, qualitative/quantitative dualism 1 63
153 science 46 -7, 1 6 3
Kofman, E. 201 Massey, D. 236
Krueger, R. A. 2 1 5, 228 Masucci, Michele 54
Kruks, S. 4 Mathison, S. 1 53
Kwan, M.-P. 1 6 1 , 1 65 , 1 6 7, 1 6 8 , Mattingly, D. 1 1 7, 1 6 1
1 6 9, 1 70-1 Matwychuk, M. 2
McDowell, L. 2, 1 O, 78, 82, 1 1 7,
labor markets 46, 5 3 -4 , 58, 69 1 3 � 1 4 � 149, 1 50, 1 6 1 , 201 , 208
Lacia u, E. 9 3 elites 2 1 0
language 77-9 epistemology 43
Grand Manan 1 79 feminist research 6 -7
research tips 1 1 5 McKenna, K. 2
study materials 71 , 1 2 7, 230 McLafferty, S. 1 63 , 1 66 , 1 67, 1 6 8
Lather, P. 149, 1 9 3 Melaren, A . T . 2 1 5 , 239, 243
Laurie, N. 8 5 meaning generation 2 1 5
Laws, S. 1 77 medicinal plants 32-3, 39-40
Lawson, V. 50, 1 63 , 1 6 7, 203 Mehra, A. 202
layering 236 Meier, V. 7, 26, 2 8 , 29
Les Emibois 26-7 memories 1 5 1
lesbians 1 1 9, 120-5 memos 1 56
Ley, D. 2 1 5 men
liberalism 8 9 duppy feminism 9 1 -1 00
literature 3 1 , 39, 40-1 and feminism 8 8 -9 1
Little, J. 1 8 5 and feminist geography 8 7- 8
Livingstone, David 34 metaphor 1 57
Lloyd, G. 8 0 method 2, 1 0 -1 1
local statistics 1 6 0 methodology see research methodology
Longhurst, R. 7 , 1 4 7 Mexico 243
Lorde, A. 1 05 Michell, L. 226
Luff, D. 122-3 Middleton, S. 1 52
Miles, M. 1 52, 1 53 , 1 56 , 1 5 7
Mackinder, H. 34 Mili, John Stuart 9 0
Macnaghten, P. 2 1 6 modernity 1 7 5
Madge, C . 1 4 6 Mohanty, C. T. 2, 244
Magris, C. 4 1 Monk, J. 36, 50, 82
Maine 1 78 Moraga, C. 2
male bias 1 65 , 1 6 7 morality 1 77
Maori 1 03 Morgan, D. L. 2 1 5
Marcus, G. E. 1 75 Morgan, K . 203
marginalization 4 8 , 77, 94 Morgan, K. P. 80
Marley, Bob 92- 3 , 1 00 Morrison, Toni 3 1 -2, 3 5 , 3 9 , 40-1
Marshall, J. 1 76 Moss, P. 2, 7, 1 1 7, 1 6 1 , 1 63 , 1 66 ,
Marx, Karl 1 3 , 90 1 8 5, 203
Marxist epistemology 44 data collection 50
I N DEX 271
positionality 1 1 9 pair interviews 1 53

representation o f results 52-3 paradoxes 8 1 , 8 3 , 8 5
Mouffe, C. 93 paradoxical spaces 78, 8 1 , 8 5 , 8 8
Mullings, B. 1 1 9 parenting, and unemployment 6 5 , 6 8
multiple methods 1 4 8 - 5 3 , 1 5 8 , 1 63 Parker, D. 1 06 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 3
München, Technical University 29 Parry, B. 208, 2 1 0
Myers, G. 2 1 6 participant observation 1 4 8 , 149-50
Myerson, G. 1 4 8 participatory action research 221
Patai, D. 2
Pateman, C. 1 77
Nadel-Klein, J. 1 75
patriarchy 69, 8 9 -9 1 , 95, 96 -9, 1 0 1 ,
Nagar, R. 1 1 0, 1 5 8 , 240
1 76 , 1 77
Nairn, K. 2, 146
duppy-character 1 00
Napia, E. B. 1 03
Grand Manan 1 8 3 , 1 84
Nast, H. J. 2, 6, 120
pay 5 3 -4, 6 7
fieldwork 1 8 2, 23 8
Peace, R. 7
reflexivity 1 1 0, 1 1 1 , 1 1 3
Peake, L. 82, 1 4 7, 1 53
national identity 4 1 , 1 1 2
performativity 8 7
negot1at1on 78-9
peripheral sampling 1 52
neutrality 1 1 7, 209
Perrons, D. 1 62
interviews 1 06
personal logs 50
science 46, 47, 4 8 , 1 6 1 , 1 6 3
Personal Narratives Group 2
New Brunswick 1 78
personal presentation 1 2 6
New Zealand 1 4 7
Philadelphia 5 4
Newton, C. 60
Philippine Women Center 1 9 7, 2 1 4 ,
Newton, E. 1 2 3 -4
222, 227, 228
Ní Dhomhnaill, Nuala 3 8
Philippines 1 8 7
Nicholson, A . 3 7
Phoenix, A . 1 1 9, 1 23
Nicotera, A. 1 96
place 1 1 1 , 234, 236, 23 8 -43
Nielson, J. M. 2
Poland, B. 2 1 1
Nigeria 1 1 0
political activism 54, 1 75, 1 77, 1 8 5 ,
non-directive methodology 2 1 4 -1 5
1 97- 8
non-parametric statistics 1 65
poli tics
Norwood, V. 50
feminism 1 3
fieldtrips 1 47- 8
Oakley, A. 4, 1 1 , 1 94 , 240 knowledge construction 7- 8 , 43,
Oberhauser, A. 1 0 8 , 240 45, 1 4 7
obj ectivity 46, 48, 1 05, 1 0 8 , 1 6 1 , 1 63 power 23 8
Okely, J. 1 49, 2 1 0 Popper, K. 84
Okoko, E . 8 5 Porter, M. 1 8 3
Olson, S. 1 66 -7 poseur 92, 96
Opie, A. 1 93 positionality 77, 1 1 6 - 1 7, 1 1 9-2 1 ,
oppression 45, 47- 8 , 55, 69, 1 62, 125, 1 8 7
1 67 autoethnography 1 8 9, 1 95, 1 96 -7
Ortner, S. B. 1 74, 1 84 and elites 2 1 0 -1 1
Ostheider, M. 25-6 insider-outsider dilemma 1 76 ,
outsider status 1 1 7, 1 1 9, 1 75 - 6 , 1 79, 185
1 8 0-1 , 1 8 5 pos1t1v1sm 1 07- 8 , 1 6 1
overseas contraer workers ( OCWs ) postcolonialism 6 9
1 8 7-92 postmodernism 5 8 , 6 9 , 1 0 7
2 72 I N D EX
poststructuralism 8 7, 1 07, 1 5 8 , 241 interviews 1 07, 1 0 8 , 1 1 1-14

data analysis 1 55 reggae 92-4
power regulatory fiction 8 7
and context 235-6, 237, 238 Reichert, D. 8 5
feminist research 6 -7, 8, 9, 1 04 Reinharz, S. 2, 1 64
gender relations 45 reinterpretation 1 8 5
and geography 3 3 -5 relationships
politics 2 3 8 employer-employee 59-62
science 47- 8 feminist 8 6
see also research relationships see also research relationships
Pratt, G. 2, 1 65, 1 6 7, 1 6 8 , 1 97, 1 9 8 , relativism 4 8
20 1 , 2 1 5 religion 5 5
autoethnography 1 9 5 representations 1 84, 1 8 5
Worcester, Massachusetts study research
5 3 -4 and action 54, 1 75 , 1 77, 1 79 ,
Pratt, M. L. 94 1 8 2-3, 221
praxis 1 3 , 22 and epistemology 4 3 -4
Pred, A. 1 1 1 humanist 9 8
Preston, V. 1 66 , 1 6 8 insider 97
Price, P . 243 poseur 96
privacy 226 priorities and practices 1 3 9-41
private spaces 1 77, 1 8 5 self-flagellator 99
privilege 44, 45, 50, 5 3 , 1 00, 1 0 1 see also funding
Probyn, E . 1 4 7 research assistants 59-62, 69,
Professional Geographer 2, 1 0, 49 239-40
Pronger, B. 92, 99-100 research methodology
Psathas, G. 2 1 1 , 212 feminist epistemology 50-1
public policy 1 3 8 -9, 140-1 feminist geography 2-3, 6, 7,
public spaces 1 77, 1 8 0, 1 82-3, 1 8 5 1 0 -1 1 , 1 2- 1 4
Pugh, A. 1 62 non-directive 2 1 4 -1 5
reflexivity 1 03 -4, 1 05 - 8
qualitative methods 1 06 , 1 63 -4 see also data analysis; data collection
feminist research 7, 1 0, 50 research participants 5 6
multiple 1 4 8-53, 1 54 research questions 4 4 , 4 9
quantitative methods 1 0 6 , 1 60 -1 , research relationships 1 04, 1 1 6,
1 62-7 143 -4, 236, 240
data analysis 1 54 - 5 difference 1 03 , 1 06 - 8
feminist research 7 , 1 0, 5 0 , 1 6 1 -2, elites 1 1 , 209-1 1
1 72 embodiment 242-3
feminist strategies 52- 3 , 1 1 1 ,
racism 4 3 , 5 5 1 1 7-20, 1 4 3
Rangan, P. 32, 3 9 fieldtrip research 1 5 0
Rastafarianism 92-4, 1 00 focus groups 2 1 4
Reay, D. 1 04, 1 0 6 , 1 09 lesbian case study 1 20 - 5
reconsideration 1 4 8 , 1 5 8 -9 writing u p 1 92
Reed-Danahay, D. 1 96 research tips
referees 84, 8 5 access to research participants 56
reflexivity 53, 78, 1 04 , 1 1 7, 1 25-6, coding 229
209, 244 collaborative proj ects 1 02
extending 1 09-1 1 computer software 1 73
I N DEX 273
data sources 3 0 masculinist 4 6 - 8

feminist relationships 8 6 obj ectivity 1 6 1 , 1 6 3
focus group research 2 1 3 Scott, J. C. 9 3
interview bags 1 59 Seager, J. 1 6 6 -7
interviews 1 8 6 Sedgwick, E. 2, 1 5 8
j argon 1 1 5 Seidler, V . J . 90
j ournals 42 self 6 , 22, 23, 55, 125
personal presentation 126 self-flagellator 92, 9 8 -9
post-interview de-briefing 1 99 self-reflexivity see reflexivity
pre-interview preparation 1 4 5 separate provision 82-4
resistance 93 -4, 1 82-3, 1 84 , 1 8 5, serendipity 1 8 0
1 8 9, 1 9 3 , 1 94, 1 9 7 sex, and gender 8 7
resistance autoethnography 1 95 - 6 , sexism 89-90, 9 1
1 98 sexuality 1 24
resource dependence 1 74 Sharp, J. P. 43, 78
results 44, 1 4 1 -2 Sheppard, E. 1 63
quantitative methods 1 6 0 silences 3 5 , 3 6 , 40
representation 52- 3 , 5 4 situated knowledge 4 8 , 1 05 , 1 06 ,
Ribbens, J. 1 25 1 6 3 , 1 75
Roberts, H. 2 data analysis 5 1
Roberts, S. M. 2 fieldwork 209
Robinson, J. 1 76 , 1 77, 1 84, 1 8 5 positionality 1 1 6
Robson, E. 8 5 and reflexivity 1 1 8
Rose, D. 1 4 8 , 1 64 Smith, D . 2 , 240
Rose, G. 2, 7, 1 77, 203 Social Sciences and Humanities
knowing analyst 1 0 8 Research Council ( SSHRC )
masculinism 46, 8 8 , 9 1 ( Canada ) 1 3 9 -40, 144
paradoxical space 8 5 , 86 software 1 73 , 229
power relations in research 1 1 9, Soj a, E. 1 1 1
1 20, 1 4 3 , 209 Song, M . 1 06 , 1 1 1 , 1 1 3
reflexivity 6 , 1 1 0, 149, 1 94, 244 South Africa, medicinal plants 32-3,
scientific objectivity 1 63 39-40
self 1 25 space 1 1 1 , 1 1 3 , 1 77, 234
sense of failure 1 09, 1 1 1 , 1 3 8 space-time constraints 1 6 8 -72
Rosenbloom, S. 1 67 Sparke, M. 90
Rossler, M. 25 spatial statistical methods 1 6 0
rude boys 93 Spender, D. 1 1 6
rurality 1 74, 1 8 1 , 1 8 5 Spivak, G . C. 9 1 , 1 05
Rydin, Y. 1 4 8 spousal abuse 1 8 1
Sprague, J . 1 6 3
safety 2 1 5 , 24 1 Stacey, J. 1 0, 1 77, 1 78 , 240
Said, E. 3 3 -4 ethnographic research methods
Samarasinghe, V. 1 62 1 8 1 , 1 94
sameness 1 1 7-25 fictionalization 1 76 , 1 8 5
Sandoval, C. 4 serendipity 1 8 0
Savage, M. 201 Staeheli, L. 8 1
Sayer, A. 203 standpoint theory 47- 8 , 1 05 - 6 , 1 6 3
scale 9-1 0 Stanley, L . 1 1 6, 209, 2 1 0
Schoenberger, E. 2 1 0 statlstlcs 50, 1 60, 1 6 1 , 1 65 - 6
sc1ence 1 3 5 status hierarchies 222-6
2 74 I N DEX
Stewart, A. J. 1 62, 1 64 universal applicability 1 6 3

Stoddart, D. R. 146 universal causality 1 6 1 , 1 6 5
stories 1 8 5 Useem, M. 206
strategic interventions 1 5 8 Ussher, J. 7
Strauss, A . 22 8
strong obj ectivity 4 8 Valentine, G. 8 1 , 1 22
Student Female Geographers Meeting validity 1 05
28 value neutrality 4 3 , 46, 4 8 , 1 3 5 , 1 6 1 ,
study material 163
doing feminist research 230-3 Vancouver 21 5, 2 1 6 -20, 221-2,
taking on feminist research 71-4 226 -7, 228, 239
thinking about feminist research Vancouver Island 140, 1 4 3
1 2 7-32 Visweswaran, K. 2 2 1
subjectivity 4 8 , 78, 1 84 , 236, 237 voca bulary see language
contextual 2 1 O
feminist research 6, 22, 23, 77 Wailers 92-4, 1 00
and power 7 Waldby, C. 1 5 8
supplication 209 Wallman, S . 1 22
Surrey, Vancouver 2 1 5 , 2 1 6 -20, Ward, K. G. 1 2 1
22 1 -2, 226 -7, 228 Wasserfall, R. 1 09, 2 1 0
survey data 1 67 Wastl-Walter, D. 29
Swann, C. 7 whakawhanaungatanga 1 03
Wilkinson, S. 2 1 5 , 2 1 6 , 220
technologies 1 75, 1 78 Williams, C. L. 1 1 8
Tekülve, M. 26 Wise, Sue 1 1 6, 209, 2 1 0
Tharun, E. 26 Witz, A. 201
theory 1 3 , 1 4 7 Wolf, D . L. 235
language 77-9 women
Thiele, L. 93 inequalities 1 6 6 -7
Thomas, R. 206-7 roles and relationships 1 74
time 8 , 6 1 space-time constraints 1 6 8-72
Tivers, J. 1 67, 1 6 8 Women and Geography Study
traditional medicine 32-3, 39-40 Group (WGSG) 2, 80, 1 1 6 , 1 6 1 ,
transcription 2 1 1-12 1 62
translation 227 Worcester, Massachusetts 5 3 - 4
travel writing 3 6 -7 words see language
triangulation 1 5 3 -4 , 1 5 6 -7, 1 6 3 -4 , work 5 8 , 1 62
203 -4 and gender 201-2
truth 2 1 -2, 4 7, 48, 55, 1 6 1 see also labor markets
Tuan, Yi-Fu 34-5 Working Circle on Feminist Geography
Tuana, N. 7 27- 8
Twyman, C. 1 94 writing up 1 1 4, 1 57, 1 8 7, 1 92
uncertainty 234-5 Young, l. 158

unemployment 58, 60, 62, 64-6,
67-9 Zimmerman, M . K . 1 6 3
unintended consequences 1 8 3 Zürich, University 2 5 , 26

Pamela J. Moss (Ed.) - Feminist Geography in Practice - Research and Methods-Blackwell (2002)

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Feminist Geography in Practice

For the feminist geographers - students,

Edited by Pamela Moss

First published 2002

Blackwell Publishers Ltd

Blackwell Publishers Inc.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for

ISBN 0-631-22019-4 (hbk)

Typeset in 10 on 12pt Sabon

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

List of Figures and Tables ix

1 Taking on, Thinking about, and Doing Feminist Research

Part 1 Takl ng on Fem l n l st Research

Part 11 T h i n k l ng about Fem l n l st Research

Short 2 Putting Feminist Geography into Practice 80

5 Paradoxical Space: Geography, Men, and Duppy Feminism 87

6 Toward a More Fully Reflexive Feminist Geography 103

7 People Like Us: Negotiating Sameness and Difference in

Study Material for Thinking about Feminist Research 127

Part 1 1 1 Doing Fem i n i st Research

Short 3 Doing Geography as a Feminist 138

8 Doing Feminist Fieldwork about Geography Fieldwork 146

9 Quantitative Methods and Feminist Geographic Research 1 60

10 Borderlands and Feminist Ethnography 1 74

11 Negotiating Positionings: Exchanging Life Stories in

12 Interviewing Elites: Cautionary Tales about Researching

13 Studying Immigrants in Focus Groups 214

Study Material for Doing Feminist Research 230

14 Further Notes on Feminist Research :

4. 1 Profiles of unemployed women presenting to agencies in

6.1 Models of feminist reflexivities 1 07

8.1 Fema le student's drawing of what she expects to do on a field

4. 1 Respondents in survey of unemployed women in Geelong,

Elisabeth Baschlin has taught human geography ( u rban geography, plan­

Lawrence D. Berg teaches feminist social and cultural geography at Okan­

Liz Bondi is professor of social geography at the University of Edinburgh,

David Butz is associate professor of geography at Brock University, Can­

Meghan Cope is an assistant professor of geography at the State University

teaching on urban problems; spatial perspectives on the social constructions

Hope Kawabata was a graduare student at the University of Nebraska at

Mei-Po Kwan is an associate professor of geography at the Ohio State

Deirdre McKay is currently at the Australian National University as a

Joan Marshall teaches environmental studies at McGill University, Canada.

Pamela Moss teaches feminist methodologies in the Studies in Policy and

Karen Nairn is a research fellow at the Children's Issues Centre, University

Geraldine Pratt is professor of geography at the University of British

What makes research in geography feminist? If you’re a feminist, do you

feminist approaches to research. Feminist geographers took up topics that

Taking on Feminist Research

Taking on feminist research entails close scrutiny and (re)politicization of

tension the immediacy of constructing authority through doing research,

Thinking about Feminist Research

Issues arising when thinking about feminist research, though similar,

a different conclusion. Even with the shift in focus on how gender is

Doing Feminist Research

Issues surrounding doing feminist research in geography are in a sense an

national, and international – with a variety of scales of analysis – for

as “the researched”) definitely heightened awareness about the actual

Elisabeth Baschlin has taught human geography ( u rban geography, plan

Lawrence D. Berg teaches feminist social and cultural geography at Okan

David Butz is associate professor of geography at Brock University, Can

exploitative relations a n d t h e experiences o f t h e processes o f marginaliza